It was my impression the phone is the source of the Internet.

Yes, we have Frontier DSL phone and internet line. But very low bandwidth.

 

The device that @crutschow linked to is called a femtocell. When used with the approved service provider, they are a good solution.

Most cell phones that I’m aware of have both cellular and WiFi capabilities. The latter is available primarily to provide Internet access without incurring cellular data charges. And to provide phone access where there is WiFi but not a cellular signal.

I’ve had an iPhone for many years. There is an option to use WiFi for cellular calls. I’m guessing that other phones have this option as well.

Since the TS has stated he has Frontier Internet service, WiFi calling (as crutschow mentioned) would be his best bet.

Yes, we do have WI-FI calling enabled on both wife and I’s IPhones.

 

Just this: in the most successful, most common use case know of the goal was to get a TV signal over a mountain and into a valley. It just needed to receive the signal on one side and transmit it on the other—one direction.

For this use, there are transmitters and receivers on both side, two directions. While this should't matter, since i haven't really tried it, I am not sure if it does matter.

@Ramussons has vouched for it, though, from experience.

2 Yagi Antennae were connected Back-to-Back using a short 300 Ohm TV ribbon cable.
It was not for extending the range, but to overcome an obstacle - mainly hills.

 

Let me add a little more detail:
Our house is rural, sitting about midway on a hill itself and surrounded by woods on three sides. To the front, we are near the base of Peters Mountain, towering at about 3000+ feet. At the rear about 700 feet or so is the top of our little wooded hill. At that top point, I can see another mountain/hill across a valley that’s about 1/2 mile or so away. (I guess it rises above my hilltop about 25-50 feet) After that, is normal flat land where a local high school is located, and cell tower location nearby. Again, I estimate distance from us to the tower to be about 2-3 miles by air—could be a little more…
In our house, we’re lucky if we can get 1 bar, and even then it comes and goes, and standing at a large window at the front. If we step outside through a door onto a deck just to the right of the inside window location, we can most times get enough signal (2 bars max and that too is spotty) to complete a text or sometimes complete a call. Our Frontier phone AND DSL internet service is weak, and since we’re rural Frontier says it’s as good as it gets. They say we’re only capable of about 3mb but when the installing tech came last year, he noted we were getting about 5. Most days it’s enough to run Netflix on our tv, and a phone. Despite many complaints against Frontier from others, I have to say we’ve been fortunate with uptimes. Using the landline has been great, and the low bandwidth hasn’t hindered us too much in our daily wants/needs. But…sending picture, saving pics to Cloud, etc., is virtually impossible most times…

 

2 Yagi Antennae were connected Back-to-Back using a short 300 Ohm TV ribbon cable.
It was not for extending the range, but to overcome an obstacle - mainly hills.

I guess that’s what I’m actually wanting to do—overcome the hills obstacles, because if not for that, I think we’d be good in signal reception…

 

Can you not use WiFi calling from your cellphone in your house?

Yes, we have that enabled.

 

Something like this might work.

But it only allows for up to 32 feet or so between antenna and receiver—in my case I need the antenna about 700+feet away to get to a 2-bar signal…

 

If you have a location on the hilltop where you can see BOTH the base station AND your house then the two yagi antennas do not need to be a great distance apart. They could be mounted back to back on the same mast. One pointing at the base station and the other pointing at your house. You would probably need the one that points to you house angled downwards. The elevation angle of the one pointing to the base station would depend on on if the base station was above , below or at the same level as the antenna on the mountain top. Just sight along the axais of the boom on the yagi antenna to the location of the base station. You might find that some TV antennas are the right frequency range.

Les.

 

Do you know the frequency that your cell service is using so you can buy antennas optimized for that frequency?

 

A passive repeater 700ft away is unlikely to be successful. Put some numbers in:

Power received by phone on top of hill, \( P_T \), you want to replicate this in your house.

Assume you have two antennas with gain \(G_1\) abd \(G_2\)

Free space loss over 700ft at 700MHz (actual loss over ground is likely to be higher)

\( FSL = 20log(\frac{\lambda}{4\pi D}) = 76dB\)

Power received by phone in house, rough estimate:

\(P_H \approx P_T + G_1(dBi) + G_2(dBi) -76\)

so to replicate the signal at the top of the hill, your antennas need 38dBi each! It is more likely that you can't get much more than 15-18dBi, so the signal in your house will be minimal.

If you want to use the signal at the top of the hill, a higher gain antenna will give you 15-18dB more signal than your phone, so you need to get it 700 ft away with less than 15-18dB of loss. The only way I can see of doing this is some sort of low loss feeder. If you have lots of spare time and want to get creative you could possibly make an open-wire line that would work, but it would be a significant undertaking, and may not work well in the rain/snow.

If you have a significant budget, then some sort of heliax cable would do it, a quick glance shows that something like EC4-50, at about $2/ft will give about 13dB of loss over 700ft at 700MHz. If you made this investment, consult an expert about weatherproofing the far end.

 

Perhaps when Starlink satellite internet service in available in your area, that would be an option to get faster internet that would work better with your cellphone.

 

You can conceivably point 4 yagis at the source (or use low gain omni's), combine that power via Wilkinson, then feed one yagi pointing down the hill. 4:1 gain minus some insertion losses.
Homework for the reader, will it work bi-directional?

 

A passive repeater 700ft away is unlikely to be successful. Put some numbers in:

Power received by phone on top of hill, \( P_T \), you want to replicate this in your house.

Assume you have two antennas with gain \(G_1\) abd \(G_2\)

Free space loss over 700ft at 700MHz (actual loss over ground is likely to be higher)

\( FSL = 20log(\frac{\lambda}{4\pi D}) = 76dB\)

Power received by phone in house, rough estimate:

\(P_H \approx P_T + G_1(dBi) + G_2(dBi) -76\)

so to replicate the signal at the top of the hill, your antennas need 38dBi each! It is more likely that you can't get much more than 15-18dBi, so the signal in your house will be minimal.

If you want to use the signal at the top of the hill, a higher gain antenna will give you 15-18dB more signal than your phone, so you need to get it 700 ft away with less than 15-18dB of loss. The only way I can see of doing this is some sort of low loss feeder. If you have lots of spare time and want to get creative you could possibly make an open-wire line that would work, but it would be a significant undertaking, and may not work well in the rain/snow.

If you have a significant budget, then some sort of heliax cable would do it, a quick glance shows that something like EC4-50, at about $2/ft will give about 13dB of loss over 700ft at 700MHz. If you made this investment, consult an expert about weatherproofing the far end.

Wow! I kinda figured it really wasn’t feasible —at least in my budget range. I had come to the conclusion earlier today that it was simply too big of an undertaking for me, and like some of my “surely there’s got to be a way this could be done more simply” thinking that I get tangled up in from time-to-time…

 

Thanks to all of you fine folks for your time and input. I’d better start focusing my time on more “doable” projects, especially since I’m getting on in years, and the time is getting shorter…

 

You need experience with GSM RF some of the best have only ok designs.
one person put a repeater together from modules. It is good to know what frequency.
https://www.qsl.net/n9zia/wireless/pics/2.4amp-module.png

An already made gsm repeater might be something like this.

 

Wow! I kinda figured it really wasn’t feasible —at least in my budget range. I had come to the conclusion earlier today that it was simply too big of an undertaking for me, and like some of my “surely there’s got to be a way this could be done more simply” thinking that I get tangled up in from time-to-time…

I'd give up on the top of the hill, but if you have some signal in the home it's probably worth investigating. There may well be significantly more signal 'higher up' (it's not uncommon to get 6dB of improvement each time you double the height of the receiving antenna above ground) and outside the house, so I'd investigate whether there is a worthwhile signal on the roof, or perhaps up a tree. Put your phone into field test mode so you get signal strength indication in dBm, which gives you more resolution than just bars https://www.ubersignal.com/field-test-mode. If you can find a reasonable signal using your phone, a higher gain antenna there will give you considerably more, and you will probably have < 10m of feeder loss. You can connect it to your phone with some sort of cradle.

 

Tha

I'd give up on the top of the hill, but if you have some signal in the home it's probably worth investigating. There may well be significantly more signal 'higher up' (it's not uncommon to get 6dB of improvement each time you double the height of the receiving antenna above ground) and outside the house, so I'd investigate whether there is a worthwhile signal on the roof, or perhaps up a tree. Put your phone into field test mode so you get signal strength indication in dBm, which gives you more resolution than just bars https://www.ubersignal.com/field-test-mode. If you can find a reasonable signal using your phone, a higher gain antenna there will give you considerably more, and you will probably have < 10m of feeder loss. You can connect it to your phone with some sort of cradle.

That makes sense…maybe I’ll dig into that a little …but we get pretty much zero signal in the house anywhere. If we stand against a large front picture window, we might get one bar at times. If we go outside near that window point, we have a better chance at one bar, sometimes 2, but it doesn’t usually hold long. I can walk up the bill about halfway and get 2 bars pretty consistently.

 

Can you climb up to roof level outside and see what the signal level is there?

 

That makes sense…maybe I’ll dig into that a little …but we get pretty much zero signal in the house anywhere. If we stand against a large front picture window, we might get one bar at times. If we go outside near that window point, we have a better chance at one bar, sometimes 2, but it doesn’t usually hold long. I can walk up the bill about halfway and get 2 bars pretty consistently.

If you can get 1-2 bars with a handheld outside that window, then it is likely that up in the air a bit, away from obstructions, is a nice steady signal. Use a high gain antenna and some low-loss feed line and you should be in business. It's much the same as UHF TV, if an indoor antenna gives a poor signal, stick one on the roof:



It was well know that there was often a much stronger signal floating above your house - you just need an outside antenna up there. Cell phone signals are much the same.