The WiFi signal in the apartment is too weak? A physicist claims to have found the solution and has created a WLAN formula for the ideal location for the router.
Everyone has experienced it before: As soon as you are in another room in the apartment where the Internet router is not, the WLAN signal is very weak. It takes forever for a page to load online. This is exactly what the physicist Jason Cole wanted to put an end to and was looking for a solution. He developed a WLAN formula that determines the best possible location for the router in the home. He has his formula on his blog “Almost looks like work” released.
“A few posts ago I was looking at optimizing Wi-Fi reception in my apartment and chose a simple method to calculate the electromagnetic intensity distribution,” explains Cole in his blog. He wanted to achieve better reception by solving the Helmholtz equation. The equation is a partial differential equation designed to show how electromagnetic waves propagate in space.
The alleged WLAN formula
Jason Cole created a floor plan of his apartment to determine the best location for his router to improve the WiFi signal. The floor plan acts as a kind of resistivity index map for the physicist, where walls have a very high resistivity index and empty space has a resistivity index of 1. Cole set up the WLAN antenna as a small radiation source. Based on this, he receives an electromagnetic intensity map.
This results in different representations of his apartment, in which the router is always in a different place. In the floor plan representations, the blue waves stand for a weak WiFi signal, the black areas for no internet reception at all and the red waves for a strong signal.
“In fact, the distribution of magnetic field strength appears to be extremely sensitive to any parameter, be it the position of the router, the wavelength of the radiation, or the resistance index of the apartment door,” writes Cole.
The result
Jason Cole comes to the conclusion that the signal flows out of the router when it is in the ideal place, as can be seen in the video. There are a few reflections at first, but as soon as there is too much space between the receiving and transmitting devices, the Wi-Fi signal begins to degrade.
Once the user is in the red wave area, i.e. in the area where the router signal can be received well, the WLAN signal can only be improved if the user gets closer to the device. This means: The closer a user is to the router with their device, the better the WiFi signal can be received. The further away from the router the user is with his device, the worse the WLAN signal.
Since every apartment has a different floor plan, and therefore has different resistances for the WLAN signal, it is not possible to derive the general ultimate router location from Cole’s illustrations.
TECHBOOK means
“I have the feeling that I cannot receive the WiFi signal from my router sufficiently in many areas of my apartment. I like Jason Cole’s approach of calculating the perfect place for the router. Unfortunately, the technology is still in its infancy. I look forward to improved successors.” – Madlen Shepherd
Jason Cole has developed an app with his formula that is intended to show users where the best place for the router is to receive a strong WiFi signal. The app can downloaded from Google Play for 0.63 euros will.
Room characteristics and WLAN antenna play a major role
Basically, however, the functionality is questionable. The result essentially corresponds to simple beam optics or, to put it simply: “If you see the router, you have good reception. If you can still see it behind a corner, the reception is still ok, if you can no longer see it (wall), the reception is bad,” explains Dr. Helge Todt, physicist at the University of Potsdam, when asked by TECHBOOK. Furthermore, Cole only considered homogeneous walls in his considerations. In apartments, however, there are usually more objects, such as furniture or plants.
Last but not least, the radiation characteristics of a WLAN antenna are also important. More is radiated across the antenna than along the antenna. This is not taken into account in Cole’s simple calculation, the physicist assumes an optimal alignment of the antenna.
Also interesting: Why you should switch off your router from time to time
Increase WiFi range
In addition to the right location, there are a few other tricks that help to increase the range of the WiFi signal. In any case, you should make sure that there are no major obstacles interfering with reception. Plants or metal objects should not be placed near the router. It can also help to use a different channel and change the router’s radio channel. It is possible that your neighbors are also using this channel, which will interfere with the signal.
Also, always update your firmware. A WiFi repeater, an external antenna or an additional router can also increase the range of your WiFi signal. Ideally, the router is in the room where you surf the web most frequently with different devices.