Could someone at Digi please provide some information the antennas that come with the XBee Pro 868 Dev Kit? One of the units comes with a wire antenna and another one with a RPSMA antenna, but I couldn’t find any info on them anywhere in the docs.
The document at http://www.digi.com/pdf/wp_xbeepro868range.pdf indicates a range of 40km with line of sight, using 2.1dBi dipole antennas. Are they the same as the RPSMA antenna that comes with the dev kit?
I would be interested in some technical information on the wire and RPSMA antennas as well as some range information if available. We see a range of about 550m in our tests (point to point through the woods, at maximum power, between the two units in the dev kit, both antennas vertical). I realize that 40km is line of sight, no woods, but 550m is a lot less than what we expected.
There are a number of articles related to antenna specs and rf considerations in our knowledgebase. Here are a couple that may be of use to you, but this is just a sample of the articles available:
In our firm we buy a DIGI 868 DEvelopement kit XBP08-DK, (one module with RPSMA connector, and another just white wire), and we do two tests.
First test is made with one module on 10m building on terrace and another in hill near our town (around 2.6km measured with google earth). Loop-back mode is used for test. RSSI is about -98…-103 showed in XCTU application.
Another more interesting test is with modules which first is stored in room (very close to window) in building about 5 floor, and another is under roof oposite to first module direction about 10 meters from ground. We have achieved 817m in urban quart of our city, without line of sight. RSSI is about -104, but communication is very good with 10% of lost packets.
We are waithing a YAGI antennas 15dBi, for testing more than 6km in urban link. I will send result in this forum.
Razvan, if you want more detail, you can ask, I will try to answer.
We have success testing with XBP08-DK 868 Modules. In urban area we connected two modules with 15dB YAGI 1.2m antennas, with 25mW RF POWER. RSSI is showed about -99dB, and distance is near 6.5km LOS. With 300mW RF power we have link without LOS, and we use this power short time because limitations of law in SRD band. RSSI in this case showed -77dB.