DIY Wireless Booster

To access the Internet on my desktop computer, I must use wireless. Unfortunately, it’s about as far away from the access point as possible: opposite corners of the house and different floors. And the wireless card I’ve got in my desktop is a little old and pretty cheap. Basically, I’ve had to battle with a poor connection for years. Often, I would have to manually move the antenna an inch this way or that, try reconnecting, and repeat. I vented to my friend, Shirley, about my connection, and she said her friend was having similar issues, so Shirley recommended she make a signal booster. That’s something I’d been thinking about doing, and thought it was about time. I googled how to make a booster. Enter the Parabolic Reflector available here. I’m sure there are lots others, but this is the one I decided to try out.

I made 3 of them. the first was made entirely with paper and tinfoil and it worked fine, but I figured I would try making a couple more with different materials: 2 different strengths of card. It’s good I did that too, as I ended up using 2 of them and giving the paper prototype to Shirley’s friend who most likely has better things to do than build paper parabolas. 🙂 (I, on the other hand, do not.)

What does it do? It turns your omni-directional antenna into a directional antenna with a stronger signal. The tinfoil does the radio wave reflecting and the shape (the parabola) just happens to be an efficient way to do that. Using this new direction, I’ve “pointed” the antenna on my wireless router towards my room – even on a bit of an angle through the floor. In my room, on my desktop PC, I’ve just pointed it horizontally in the direction of the access point.

The results have been great. Without any home-made boosters, I received 25-35%, with one on the access point, i received 35-55%, and with one on both the access point and my desktop antennas, I’m receiving a pretty steady 62-68% (see the graph, above). I still receive disconnects, but it’s now much easier to reconnect… usually happens automatically on the first try – I don’t even have to do anything!

So if you’re having wireless issues, give it a shot! It certainly doesn’t cost much. 🙂