I amplified my home's Wi-Fi with aluminum foil

It can work surprisingly well, I made a &quot;dish&quot; with an aluminum foil that was able to connect to a Romanian Wi-Fi hotspot from Bulgaria, according to Google Maps it should be something like 20KM distance. I should note that I had direct view of the town as I had significantly higher altitude.<p>The hotspot was some kind of public service provided by the Romanian town as it&#x27;s name suggested. The ip WhoIs also confirmed that it was a Romanian one.<p>Every now and then the connection would have had slowed down and I would do some &quot;Voodoo magic&quot; on the aluminum foil to fix it(Not sure if it was me though, it seemed like if I move the dish slightly or fix a bump in the foil the connection would improve).<p>This was probably like 7-8 years ago and I was able to get something close to 6-7Mbps as far as I remember.

This kind of hack was really popular when wifi was first being adopted. These reflectors work best when they are spaced according to the wavelength. Here is a template I remember seeing years ago:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.freeantennas.com&#x2F;projects&#x2F;template2&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.freeantennas.com&#x2F;projects&#x2F;template2&#x2F;</a>

I don&#x27;t think this is working the way he thinks it does.<p>What he&#x27;s likely do is shielding the wifi receiver from co-channel interference, which is likely reducing the noise floor at the AP - which is giving him effectively more range, because now the AP can hear stations that are further away with greater ease.<p>I don&#x27;t think this is giving expanded tx coverage lobes as his diagram indicates, its likely a function of lowering the noise floor that gives the extra coverage.

If you want to to do this &quot;properly&quot;, see <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ham-radio.com&#x2F;k6sti&#x2F;wifiyagi.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ham-radio.com&#x2F;k6sti&#x2F;wifiyagi.htm</a><p>When messing with antennas, things like distance needs to be thoroughly calculated. Foil can help in many ways, but it can also make things worse—antenna calculations are tricky.

When we were kids we took massive mesh wire frames and wrapped them around the receivers of these kind [1] of dinky walkie talkies. It fully extended the range by a whole two blocks. We thought we&#x27;d invented sliced bread.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;img.segundamano.mx&#x2F;medium&#x2F;32&#x2F;3227658794.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;img.segundamano.mx&#x2F;medium&#x2F;32&#x2F;3227658794.jpg</a>

Do not tilt the antenna though. Maximum emission of an dipole is perpendicular to its axis.

I was thinking of doing something similar a few days ago but came to the conclusion — perhaps wrongly — that the inevitable creases in a DIY aluminium foil sheet would render it ineffective as a dish, due to the scatter created.<p>Anyone more knowledgeable able to chime-in on the effect of creases here? I couldn’t find any mention of it in the article...

I got this guy and this allows me to read &#x2F; play games in my bathtub<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aliexpress.com&#x2F;item&#x2F;Original-Portable-Light-Weight-Xiaomi-Mi-WiFi-300M-Amplifier-2-Expander-for-Mi-Router&#x2F;32789948233.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aliexpress.com&#x2F;item&#x2F;Original-Portable-Light-Weig...</a>

Is there a way to see the tangible output of the coverage?<p>How is the author drawing those diagrams? Can I map my room with the strength of wifi signals at different points?<p>I want to do these small hacks but also want to see the change validated in some way. Any pointers will be appreciated.

Slight nit there&#x27;s no amplification here just focusing to make the field more directional.

I am using my neighbors WiFi, which I can only catch in my balcony. He stays above me, but diagonally opposite, so the source is quite away. Any way I can amplify the WiFi strength? So I need the source to be around in order to amplify?

What´s the &#x27;household shelter&#x27; for?

I have done that before except I went to HD and bought some aluminum flashing and made a corner reflector. Worked really, well and looked a bit ... tidier.

Put &#x27;em just behind the antenna like a dish aimed toward where you want to bend the signal to. It&#x27;s not great, but it&#x27;s cheap and easy.

Aha I did something similar to this a while back. Had an ancient computer with a $2 WiFi dongle very far from the access point.<p>It could barely sustain a connection, never mind actually doing anything. So I cut up the neck of a bottle, covered with aluminium foil, and even added a little reciever at the focus point of the dish.<p>Signal bars went to a solid usable III.

For optimal results, place the reflector at distance d = c &#x2F; 2f behind the antenna (half wavelength). Where c is the speed of light and f is the frequency of your wifi. For example, for 5 Ghertz signal, that will be 30mm.

Reminds me of this guy who used the same technique on the receiver: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;VZKc3PBs67c" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;VZKc3PBs67c</a>

For the antenna case (and I believe for the optics case too, but I&#x27;m not an optics guy) the beam disperses as 1&#x2F;r^2 in both cases.<p>In transmit , the reflector provides focusing, which puts more power in less of the volume. In receive, the increased aperture allows the antenna to capture a greater area of the incoming wave giving more receive power. The effects are equal and usually just thought of as&quot;gain&quot; which is reciprocal for transmit and receive.

better off just getting some patch antennas and using them.. though that&#x27;s more expensive then foil, it does give you better control of the directions.

See also: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;mentalfloss.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;515193&#x2F;researchers-develop-cheap-way-improve-wi-fi-coverage-aluminum-foil" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;mentalfloss.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;515193&#x2F;researchers-develop-ch...</a> (&quot;Researchers Develop a Cheap Way to Improve Wi-Fi Coverage With Aluminum Foil&quot;)

This blog is missing a lot of details before we can consider this experiment successful. Most importantly, what is the usable throughput of a station in the &quot;improved&quot; coverage area? I would recommend using iperf before&#x2F;after to see if there is any practical benefit.

Did that a while ago, when the trees have leaves, I hardly receive WiFi in my shed. So I put a aluminum foil when I went to the back around the router.<p>It worked, but other directions are difficult. I also had success by changing the channel with less interference in my router settings.

Just keep in mind you need some antenna diversity for the MIMO to work. Adding the foil increases the directivity, which you don’t want for MIMO. Though it improves fringe reception, it may reduce the data rate for devices that already have sufficient SNR.

The geek in me loves stuff like this. The old and jaded techie in me says just get something designed to solve the issue like:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eero.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eero.com</a> or the UniFi Mesh<p>:)

It&#x27;s a little bit a shame, that this is not a standard solution for most IT related people, wouldn&#x27;t you say?

I just got back home for the holidays and made fun of my dad for doing this. Seems like it is working tho!

theoretically, are there any regulatory issues on a piece of aluminum sold (and marketed) for this purpose?<p>if not, why aren&#x27;t there cheap and effective such designs on alibaba - why have to DIY?

I&#x27;ve heard it works for 802.11n. Does it work for 802.11ac?

It has an effect, but much smaller than hoped in my experience

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=LY8Wi7XRXCA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=LY8Wi7XRXCA</a>

This is called Beamforming. Look it up.

does this stuff work with walls?<p>I have a basement with thick walls.

A bit off topic, but what is this page doing, loading almost 500K in 2 XHR calls for approximately 9K of text... Egads, all the images are inlined data URIs!<p>I was staring at a blank page with a single image for over 10 seconds before the article text loaded. No loading indicator or anything.