Advantages of new network technologies: 4G and diversity

At this point in the blog, we are going to dedicate today's article to focusing on the advantages that new network technologies offer us to have greater connection speed and stability in it. This is a more technical issue than on previous occasions, but it is well worth dealing with since they are technologies focused on offering more connection speed, stability and reliability to our WiFi networks.

Everyone knows the term 4G or LTE, but what is it really and what advantages does it bring us?

It is simply a communications protocol, that is, it is the way a mobile terminal, for example a mobile phone, has to communicate with the data network of the telephone operator.

Currently this protocol is only available by operators in large cities, but little by little it is spreading and it is easy to foresee a massive implementation in a few years. But it must be said that in order to take advantage of this new protocol, our mobile terminal must be compatible with it. In the case that concerns us in this blog, WiFi systems, we will need the internal modem of our WiFi router to be 4G, otherwise we will not be able to connect using this protocol, and therefore we will not benefit from its advantages.

But, what are those advantages that make it so interesting to have 4G technology?

Mainly the speed they allow. At a theoretical level, an LTE network allows download speeds of up to 100 Mbps, although telephone operators speak of average speeds of around 20 Mbps and 40 Mbps. Even so, these bandwidths are truly incredible and represent a huge jump compared to bandwidths. band of third generation mobile networks (3G).

In our case, where we will use this technology in an on-board WiFi router, this increase in speed will allow us to provide a better service to our travellers, since the increase in the bandwidth of the line will cause the flow to be distributed among the connected users. it is of greater capacity, so the user experience will be much better and the perception of quality of service will be more positive, and ultimately that is what a carrier seeks when it decides to implement Wi-Fi in its vehicles: that its passengers use the service and Make sure your feedback is as positive as possible.

Finally, we are going to deal with another new technology that will also help us to provide a better WiFi service in the coach. We are talking about Diversity technology.

What does this new technology consist of?

Basically what we get thanks to this technology is greater stability in communication as well as an increase in speed.

This technology is based on the use of multiple antennas to receive the signal, separated from each other by a minimum distance of one meter between them in the case of 4G antennas. Combining, for example, two separate antennas connected to the same WiFi router, we managed to obtain the reading of the operator's mobile network signal in duplicate. With this we get two independent and different readings since the antennas are in different positions and the coverage recorded by one may be different from that of the other. From there, the router receives the signals from the two antennas and merges them into a single signal. Thanks to this, an incomplete and therefore unstable signal can be complemented with the signal from the second antenna and obtain a complete resulting signal, deriving from it a much more stable and faster connection.

Again, as in the case of 4G technology, our equipment must support Diversity technology in order to make use of it and benefit from its advantages. For this reason it is important to have WiFi routers that have Diversity among their technical characteristics, as it will help us to have a much more stable and reliable Internet connection for our passengers.