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Improving cell-phone coverage for multiple carriers

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phadobas

Technical User
Jul 30, 2005
612
US
I have a building that has poor/non-existent cell-phone signal for pretty much all the major carriers, and I want to fix that. In the past, I had installed repeater systems for individual carriers, and I'm familiar with the theory of how they work: an outside antenna picks up the signal (should be placed where there is good signal), then bring that inside on a coax (the thicker the better), into an amplifier, which then distributes the signal to 1 or more internal dome antennas.
OK, but here I need to handle 5 carriers. I checked and found that they all use the 1900Mhz frequency. So now how do I do this? Do I need to have 5 separate yagi antennas on the roof, pointing in 5 different directions (to the 5 towers of the 5 different carriers)? Or use one omnidirectional antenna (if such thing exists...) to pick up the signal of all 5 carriers? And if I use 5 yagi-s, do I need some signal combining device to bring all 5 signals down into 1 amplifier, or do I need 5 separate amplifier? And if I end up using 5 separate amplifiers, do I then need 5 separate in-door dome antennas to cover the area? Anybody knows how would this work?
 
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