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Transformation Day

A project log for Cell Phone 4G LTE Repeater / Booster / Femtocell

An outside pole mounted aerial picks up 4G signals which are then filtered, amplified and re-transmitted through a second inside aerial.

capt-flatus-oflahertyCapt. Flatus O'Flaherty ☠ 07/21/2017 at 12:326 Comments

We now have a product - a basic 4G cell phone signal booster that works on band 20 (800 MHz). As far as a business plan is concerned, this could be sold as a kit where the user does all the easy, labour intensive soldering and simply buys the main PCB ready populated with the fiddly SMT components. It can also be hacked to work as a general purpose microwave RF digitally controlled amplifier for experimentation, but be warned - this gadget is capable of quite high transmission power - up to 1/2 watt - and a special operation license may be required. As a cell phone booster it works at a power in the order of 1 mW with a maximum range of about 10 metres so does not risk interfering with the neighbours too much.


Here, above, the massive conglomeration of wires and circuit boards of the prototype on the left is miraculously shrunk into one neat unit with only two loose wires which will connect to the indoors and outside antennae. Fear not, the device is still fairly hackable and even supports addition of the nice pretty Adafruit TFT screen with special mounting holes and connections, if required (but not essential).

Finished, fully assembled, Arduino Cell Phone 4G Signal Booster as below. I did a quick test today and it actually worked! Still some room for improvement though.Schematic is HERE.

PCB design file is HERE.

BOM is HERE.

Discussions

Pero wrote 07/23/2017 at 20:34 point

Whoa, you made it! Awesome! Now I'm intrigued to make one as well :) Or buy it from you :)

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Capt. Flatus O'Flaherty ☠ wrote 07/24/2017 at 06:28 point

Pero ..... you might be able to do me a favour if your local 4G is anything other than band 20 - I'm looking for people to help test the device on band 13 etc. I've tested band 20 ok. I could send you a pcb ?

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Pero wrote 07/24/2017 at 07:50 point

sounds exciting..how to find out what band my network is?

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Capt. Flatus O'Flaherty ☠ wrote 07/24/2017 at 08:13 point

You can use a cheap SDR (software defined radio) as a spectrum analyser and search the likely frequency areas whilst uploading a video to youtube :)

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Pero wrote 07/25/2017 at 22:13 point

nice trick. I'm going to try it out...

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Capt. Flatus O'Flaherty ☠ wrote 07/26/2017 at 13:01 point

Have fun!

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