Monday is World WiFi Day - special Enterprise WiFi photo contest

Post a photo of your Enterprise WiFi network to this thread. Give a kudo to the photos you like. The three photos on this thread with the most kudos at the end of the day on June 20 wins a T-Shirt and Hat.

E500 in a mall

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Shouldn't this Access Point be placed horizontally, not vertically? It has omni antenna, not sector. 

This is a good question thank you. The e500 actually has 3 veritcally polarized antennas and one horizontally polarized antenna and these antennas are collinear array types (stacked dipoles) so we can get more peak gain than a standard dipole (2.2dBi). Since a dipole is no Omnidirectional (it is a figure-eight shape) when you stack multiple dipoles the shape of the pattern changes and you also have impact of the enclosure and Printed-Circuit-Board-Assembly. The final antenna patterns are not perfect dipoles or Omnidirectional, but the polarization (i.e. orientation that the EM wave launches from the radiating element) is still vertical for both 2.4GHz antennas and one of the 5GHz antennas and Horizontal for the second 5GHz antenna element. Polarization changes as objects in the area of the AP are encountered and the polarization of the client device (cell phone, laptop, etc...) are variable as well. Our testing showed that if we had dual-polarization for the 5GHz antennas on the AP we had a bit better coverage with a cellular handset as the client so that is why we have dual polarization on the 5GHz. The e500 should be placed vertically so the Ethernet port is facing the ground for optimal performance. 

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This is essentially a re-post from the other day... for the 4 Peaks Music Festival with around 1000 attendees, we deployed (3) E500 AP's, (2) of which were in mesh mode using 5GHz as the dedicated mesh band. We used 2.4GHz for client access. We used a connectorized PMP450 3.65 SM w/2' dish for BH. Mesh client 1 was 212 meters, and mesh client 2 was 148 meters from the master AP. Both mesh AP's had near-LOS across the tops of various tents and RV's. At it's peak we had almost 200 clients connected between the 3 AP's. We used the traffic shaping built into the E500's as well as the roaming cut-off feature to ensure that decent quality clients connected to help reduce congestion.

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Hi Jim, thanks for clarification. Few additional questions if you don't mind
* What is the peak gain in comparison to standard dipole?
* Do you have antenna paterns for both polarizations for E400 and E500 that you could share?
* Why don't you have all antenna elements in 5 GHz dual polarized instead of just one that is horizontal, and others are vertical? So if a 2x2:2 client is talking to horizontal antenna you don't have MIMO anymore? And how do you beamform in that case?
* Why not use dual polarized antenna elements in 2.4 GHz as well?
I wouldn't highlight coverage with dual pol antennas but rather an AP being better listener in that case on the RF when client changes orientation/polarization. 
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Thank you to everyone who participated in our World WiFi Day photo contest! All of the entries showcased outstanding applications of the products.

Without further ado here are the winners of the Enterprise Wifi Network contest:

1) Juan Marriot - "E500 in mall"

2) Eric Ozrelic - "E500 4 Peaks Music Festival"

I will be sending an email to each winner regarding the details for receiving your free T-shirt and hat!

Thank you again for the awesome photos and for choosing Cambium products.

Hi Gummybear,

The antenna gain patterns for the E500 are in the data sheet (download from: http://www.cambiumnetworks.com/resources/cnpilot-e500/). 

The E400 data sheet is being updated for antenna patterns as well and will be available shortly formally. Meantime a draft copy of the E400 data sheet is attached here as well for your reference.