Minimum effort satellite dish WiFi antenna

Question

I've recently moved into a cabin which is about 100 feet from a standard WiFi router. My computer's antenna is good enough to get signal from the router but an antenna would improve the reliability of the connection. There is a satellite dish with in situ coax cable currently on the cabin, so I wondered if it could be used as an external antenna. I'm happy to do whatever work is necessary but the simplest solution would seem to be connecting some sort of repeater or network switch (?) directly to the existing coax if possible. I've seen other solutions that involve replacing the dish feedhorn with a wireless antenna, which seems possible albeit more work, but I still wouldn't know what to put on the other end of the wireless antenna cable. My computer is a Chromebook with only two USB-C ports, so for that reason and because I'd like to connect my phone, ideally the signal in the cabin would be wireless, not wired.

• Is this possible?
• If yes, how would I go about looking for the correct electronics equipment to attach?
• If not, what would be the easiest thing to do instead?

Thank you!

Answer 1

As you state, 30 m is within acceptable range for WiFi, but with noisy, therefore, slow, throughput.

First, try an external USB WiFi adapter with it's own antenna and connector for an external one, such as this example for ~US$17. You'd also need a USB-2 to USB-C adapter, such as this one for ~US$7, if you don't already have one.

However, to get a stronger signal with less noise, it is easy to make and use a simple directional antenna, such as this cantenna for the 2.4 GHz band, or this double biquad for the 5.8 GHZ band, rather than try to re-engineer the dish. It is more convenient to orient a cantenna while observing the signal strength on the device, rather than re-aiming a dish outside, too. Note also that a satellite dish likely is designed for the 12 GHz band, not the 2.4 or 5.8 GHz WiFi bands.

The external antenna could be connected either to the WiFi adapter, or to the laptop's internal antenna -- either through surgery, or by running the center conductor of the external antenna along the laptop's case, taped parallel to the internal antenna.