External directional bluetooth antenna?

[nicobijl]

Hi,
can i use my WiPy board together with a directional antenna to scan for bluetooth devices?

I want to use a antenna like:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Hot-RP-SMA-2-4GHz-25-DBi-Yagi-Wireless-WLAN-WiFi-Antenna-For-Modem-PCI-Card/32811115692.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.flAAqW

for bluetooth..

Is this possible?

Thanks,

[livius]

@nicobijl said in External directional bluetooth antenna?:

possible

You can try (remember about socket u.f adapter)
but without any description of the antenna (which looks not good quality) nothing more can i say.

[jcaron]

@nicobijl I would be curious to understand the use case of a directional antenna with Bluetooth.

Note that in another thread there appeared to be a doubt on whether the internal/external switch actually works for Bluetooth in the current firmware.

[nicobijl]

@jcaron
I just want to scan for bluetooth devices, but only in one direction...
With another board i'll cover another direction..
So, for example with 4 board + directional antenna's i'll be able to detect the 'location' of the beacon.

[jcaron]

@nicobijl Interesting use case, though you'll be faced with reflections and multipath which may give you false results, depending on the exact layout (and most importantly, distances). Also, you should check the gain of your antenna in various directions, it's not because it's "concentrated" in some directions that it doesn't receive anything in others.

Note also that if you do anything that transmits (active scanning, which I believe is the default now?), using a directional antenna means more gain, which may bring you above the allowed TX power threshold (depends on your region). Conversely, at short distances the high gain main saturate the receiver.

Finally, one would need to check the exact radiation pattern, but I'm not sure 4 such antennas would be enough to cover 360°, they have a relatively narrow aperture.

Let us know what you find out!