Summer is emerging and people are heading for travel and adventure. A few people will jump into nature with only survival tools, but most of us still want our normal comforts, like staying connected away from the strong signals of home. Connection is so important that Airstream received the New Horizons award at RVX: The RV Experience in Salt Lake City, Utah. Airstream’s new trailers include their Airstream Connected technology. The Airstream technology uses a cellular router with a high performance antenna to provide Wi-Fi internet access both inside and outside the RV. While the Airstream Connected package is custom designed for their trailers, anyone who wants to be connected far away from home can get the same technology with a cellular router and a high quality antenna. With these tools RVers heading to the woods and sailors on the open water can stay connected even where smart phones struggle for a signal.
Most RV parks and harbors have some sort of Wi-Fi. But anyone who has roamed an RV park trying to find exactly the right spot to connect knows how unreliable public Wi-Fi can be. Harbor Wi-Fi is lost as little as 50 feet beyond the dock. On the water there are only two options for internet or communications, expensive satellite or cellular. For near-shore leisure-based maritime traffic, five to nine miles out, cellular is significantly less expensive, particularly for any significant bandwidth usage. With the right equipment, a cellular signal can be received up to 10 miles off shore.
A Wi-Fi Router without cable
Home routers are powerful and easy to use. When they are home no one thinks twice about the easy connection for their phones, tablets, laptops, and even game consoles. The same level of convenience and easy connectivity is available in powerful cellular routers without the cable connection. The Pepwave MAX cellular router line includes moderately priced, enterprise level cellular routers that include dual SIM card slots to have two different carriers available for the best possible connection. While there are other somewhat similar brands, The Pepwave cellular routers feature SpeedFusion which will “failover” from one carrier SIM to the another, maintaining the best signal for an uninterrupted connection. They can be powered with 10 to 30 volts, and can operate from -40° to 149°F, making them suitable for any RV or Boat. The Airstream Connect system uses a Pepwave router.
“My Phone has no bars. How can I connect with Cellular?”
No one buys a smart phone because it has a great antenna. Phone designers dedicate their precious space to marque features like cameras and batteries. Since most phones are used in populated areas with strong signals, and since no one points a finger at the phone manufacturer when they can’t connect, phone designers rate the internal antennas as good-enough technology. However, where signals are weak the quality of an antenna can make the difference.
While many “high gain” antennas are available, they often perform poorly, having full gain in only a small part of the frequency band. If a carrier’s signal is in a 690MHz channel and an antenna’s stated gain is only reached at 1700MHz the specified gain is meaningless. Generally an antenna from major designers like Poynting, Panorama, and Mobile Mark will have full specified gain across the entire frequency band. A full spectrum medium gain antenna will often deliver a clearer signal than a poor quality high gain antenna.
The Airstream Connected technology uses a medium gain Poynting antenna. These units are available with five antennas in one waterproof IP68 housing — two LTE elements for cellular signals, two elements for dual band Wi-Fi, and a GPS element for location. In addition to the full bandwidth performance and higher gain, the Poynting MIMO-3 antenna can be mounted on top of an RV for vastly improved line-of-sight performance. For maritime applications a mast mounted, pole antenna can offer even better reception of cellular signals. The Poynting OMNI-402 offers 2×2 MIMO LTE performance in an IP68 Marine enclosure costing about one third of the price of other premium marine antennas.
Travelers enjoying nature, or navigating the Great Lakes and coastal waters do not have to be isolated from the Internet. For a modest investment in the right connection technology travelers can enjoy the safety and convenience of connectivity wherever they roam.
