Power of wifi signal

Thread Starter

varden

Joined Jul 11, 2016
38
Hi. I relaized I kept the wifi modem near me all the time. It is like half meter away from my desk. I didn't care much before but now I want to move it to some other room because of health concerns. The problem is wifi power level is always full wherever I move the modem.
How does the signal strength vary depending on the distance? Is it really matter to move it since signal level always shows full?
 

Ya’akov

Joined Jan 27, 2019
9,070
RF signal strength varies inversely with the square of the distance, so moving it makes a very big difference in power levels you will experience.

The RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indication) shown by your devices has a very low resolution if it is the typical five segment version. If you want to know what is really happening you will need to find where your device can display the RSSI as dBM, which is a number and much more useful for this sort of thing.

The bottom line is, the inverse square law means the power drops very rapidly the further away you get.
 
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