LoRa

3. Fact Assets 3.1 Hardware Assets mesh hardware
5

External Antenna

Many low-cost yet high-performance external antennas are available at LoRa frequencies.

For 915MHz the following is recommended for beginners:

antenna
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Note

  • these are dipoles, so performance tend to be better than monopoles.

1. IPX to SMA cable

Connectors

  • SMA can be MALE or FEMALE
  • IPX has many other names IPEX-1 or U.FL

There are normally 3 cable sizes:

  • 0.81mm
  • 1.13mm
  • 1.78mm (also called RG178 )

Please get thicker cable e.g. RG178 if possible.

Screenshot 2025-09-26 at 3.50.28 pm
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C934-001_datasheet.pdf (2.2 MB)

Make sure to get the correct MALE or FEMALE version of the SMA connector for your external antenna.

2. Tigertail

If you have a monopole antenna, sometimes you can increase its range with a "tigertail" hack to make it into a dipole.