H vs V polarization: Can't we all get along?

Your typical wifi box has vertical polarization. The notebook wifi cards are horizontally polarized. This doesn't seem very well planned.

So wouldn't it make sense to have circular polarization, especially if you are building antennas for stumbling purposes?

For a somewhat different question, some high power cards have two antenna connectors. [SMC2532W-B] Does anyone know if this card polls both antenna connections? What I am leading to is you could do your stumbling with two different antennas, one H and one V, letting the antenna choose on the fly.

Reply to
miso
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Planning? Surely you jest. Actually, the typical PCMCIA antenna has quite a bit of both vertical and horizontal polarization. If the antenna was in a "clean" environment, free of outside influences and reflectors, it might be an issue (such as in a point to point link), but not with a typical notebook internal antenna or PCMCIA card.

The Effect of Electric Field Polarization on Indoor Propagation.

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show less than 2dB loss due to polarization mismatch.

No. The difference is negligible for most situations. Circular polarization does make sense for point to point links and over water, where reflections from the ground may cause cancellation problems. The reflection changes sense (left hand becomes hight hand) thus eliminating any odd numbered reflections. Circular polarization also drastically reduces the effects of Rayleigh fading, but that has little effect on Netstumbler results.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Stop calling me Shirley. ;-)

I was thinking more of netstumbling applications rather than strickly indoors, thus the polarization should matter. I suspect vertical polarization is best for drive-by applications since we know the WAPs are vertically polarized.

BTW, I managed to find some info on that SMC card. Diversity in receive only. The transmitter only comes out the connector near the LEDS. I ran this card with a biquad a few times and suppose I must have picked the right connector by luck since I never had it not work.

Jeff Liebermann wrote:

Reply to
miso

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