Many of us, at one point in time, had a share of frustrating experiences of failing to take or receive a call or a text message from our mobile devices due to signal issues while indoors. It is even more exasperating when you realized that outside your door the signal strength is good and working great. 

Situations described above are not uncommon and are usually due to the building structure itself. The satellite signal itself is having a hard time penetrating through the building’s roof system and walls. 

Sometimes this has something to do with the modern insulating materials used by the building or the house itself. A typical example of which is the foil-backed insulation materials, such kind of insulating material can get in the way of the signal ingress. If this is the case for you, it would be necessary that you step outside first, in the cold, just to make a call.  

Today, things have taken a 360-degree turn and mobile devices that are available in the market are not just phones anymore. They are now engineered to perform a wide spectrum of other functions, and a handful of which would be relying so much on GPS satellite signals. 

The common ground of GPS signals and mobile signals is that it is not unusual for them to fail on reaching the interior of a building. This can be attributed partly to the diminished signal strength after going through an 11,600-mile journey, starting from the satellites orbiting the planet up in space from which they originated.

This kind of setback can be resolved through a simple solution. An enabling technology known as GPS repeater would help fill in the void here. This type of device is primarily designed to relay GPS signals to almost every kind of indoor location that is not usually reachable.  

GPS repeater systems usually would have the following elements: 

• outdoor GPS antennas
• coaxial feeder cable
• the indoor GPS repeater unit
• antenna mounting bracket
• AC/DC power adapter

The ideal location for installing an outdoor antenna should have open access to the sky. We suggest that your outdoor antenna is at or just above your house’s roof level. This will help the antenna efficiently pick up signals from as many satellites as possible.  

Once a satellite signal is received it will travel down through the coaxial cable, then will head toward the repeater unit. The device will then boost the signal strength and will then be transmitted to the indoor space. 

Indoor repeater units come with their internal re-radiating antenna. The purpose of which is to emit signals through a beam, at around 140 degrees wide, so that it will have a minimum of 18-meter coverage radius. 

If a GPS antenna repeater unit is not good enough in covering a required area, you can opt to install additional repeaters and connect them all via a signal splitter. This will substantially help in increasing its effective coverage area for around 60M by 60M, although this could be influenced also by the layout and shape of the space in question.  

This technology comes with its own set of benefits. One of which is that testing, manufacturing, calibration, operation, and repair of GPS-enabled equipment can not be done indoors as opposed to the need to step outside of your house.  

Who Will Benefit the Most from a GPS Antenna Repeater Technology?  

All types of equipment that are wired within it a GPS receiver will be built, tested, and sometimes will need to get calibrated at a certain point in its life-cycle.  

Below is not an exhaustive list of sectors that will benefit the most from a GPS signal repeater: 

• Test laboratories and electronic manufacturing firms since they usually carry out their GPS receiver tasks indoors. 
• Retail outlets that offer their client GPS signal inside their store which allows them to perform a live demonstration of the technology they have on offer with the use of live satellite signals.
• Fire stations. The on-board control and command equipment they use need to constantly remain in contact with as many satellites as possible while it is being safely nestled down inside the station. This helps a lot in taking away the agonising waiting time just for satellite signal acquisition to take place when going out of the station during a callout.