Arcadyan KVD21 5G which connectors for 5G external antenna

@udidwht. No. You may have luck asking your local TM store if you can exchange your KVD21 for the new G4AR gateway, which has antenna connectors on the exterior of the unit.  

I am not familiar with the concept of a powered antenna. It may be worth a try. 

Is there a way to use an external antenna that can boost the signal without the need of opening the KVD21? Say a powered antenna that you can connect to wireless with the KVD21?

4-month follow-up.

After a few months of trying to chase the elusive SINR rating, a few changes to the antenna system solved the issue. 

In my experience, when I can get a good SINR > 13, my web pages and YouTube content loads faster.

Taking advice from many users, I swapped out my 2x2 MIMO for a 4x4 MIMO antenna and placed it in my attic. While my RSRP and RSRQ improved, my SINR would float between 6-9, and a ping of > 40. 

I remember hearing about deflecting signals with tinfoil (and my personal experience with another gateway). I looked at my cellmapper.com layout and noticed that I have 5G and LTE signals coming from the north and east. To deflect them, I tried putting up tinfoil shields to deflect them. See the photo. My SINR now floats between 15-19. Internet responsiveness is much better. Also, my ping is usually 20-40 ms. 

RSRQ -11

RSRP - 84

SINR 15

Ping 20-40

My message here is simply that unless you are you have a strong signal with consistently higher speeds ( > 70 Mbs), you should be prepared to do a little tinkering to find the sweet spot. Overall, now I am a happy T-Mobile Home Internet customer.  

I have no experience with the smaller antennas like that so I have no idea how much that will improve the reception. In the office we used an indoor 4G LTE booster. It helped but still was quite limited in capability as the only real way for the signals to get into the location was via a hallway to a door. The upper floor and all around our desk space was pretty much lab equipment or other electronic gear and upstairs more of the same. In a home without the heavy interference it would be a different equation. 

If you receive the midband then go for the 4x4 MIMO if it still fits the budget. If you only get the n71 then the 2x2 MIMO should be ok. I would probably shoot for 4x4 MIMO as you never know when T-Mobile might just upgrade the cell from n71 to n41. I did not expect it here as we are in a rural area with lots of pastures and fields but they did. That was just a little over a year from the initial n71 stand up. If they see growth and are planning for more users they will bump the cells up to n41 as the frequency can carry more data being a shorter wavelength. 

The good thing is you can connect the pig tails and then just swap the SMA’s so you dont have to install anything but once.. I have to look up the technical specs to see which connection is for what frequency.

2x2 is what i need, cause no one makes a small 4x4 that i can find, or am i wrong?

the issue i see is a 4x4 is a price to pay, so lowest cost 4x4 for the home is 150USD

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B8MZSCF5/

Unless someone else has something better.

You might check out Nater Tater's YouTube videos on the antenna addition. I am more familiar with the Nokia gateway and the waveform external MIMO antennas. I believe his videos focus on those both 2x2 and 4x4 MIMO. To take full advantage of the n41 mid band frequency a 4x4 MIMO is really needed. I do know Waveform.com has some excellent documentation for the gateway break down and the antenna additions. You might have to experiment with the connections a bit if it is not clearly documented in a way that makes sense for that antenna. One thing to be extra, extra careful about is making the connections to those u.fl connectors. They are tiny, delicate and easy to break. If you break one they are not too difficult to replace but just need the tools and the connectors which also can be bought online. 

Without any documentation I can't say which connections to make. I believe Nate has also covered the Sagemcon as well as the Arcadyan gateways. The Nokia he went over before those. The information from Waveform is excellent.

i am working on putting a 2x2 antenna on my gateway, pretty technical and an EE.

My 4/5G small antenna has sma labels MAIN and AUX on them, which ones do these go to on the D and M connectors?

Amazon has some low costs options for those in condo’s and homes without the need for a roof mounted system, literally like 25 bucks for the pigtail connectors and antenna.

This is the (2 pack) pigtails:https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08G57DD33

This is a 4G but not sure if it works with 5G, will test: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07K143JS5/

This is a omni 4G/5G: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B9J2MHTB/

Let me know if anyone can help me with the connection labels.

Joe

Regarding n41 and b66. The n41 is the 5G which T-Mobile will leverage for the download flow. The b66 is the 4G LTE and is commonly used for the upload traffic. So you would notice, if you could see it, that the gateway maintains two signals. The primary signal is the 4G LTE signal b66 and the secondary signal will be the 5G signal n41 in your case. The gateway really needs both to work the way they intend it to work. It is NOT a pure 5G solution with T-Mobile. 

The link below renders the page that has the bands T-Mobile uses for each signal “type”.

https://www.t-mobile.com/support/coverage/t-mobile-network

You can try this: http://192.168.12.1/TMI/v1/gateway?get=all

It will report information about the gateway config and operation. The Arcadyan specific. Nater Tater had used the command via the web browser but I have not seen the reporting for some time.

With the newest code on the Arcadyan gateway it is supposed to provide more cellular metric information. Currently you might be limited to using the mobile application on it. I know the web access for admin is not working for the newest firmware. It bugs me that the Arcadyan has such poor configuration with T-Mobile's access methods. It is a poor solution in my opinion. 

You need to find the PCI physical cell identifier value for the 4G LTE and 5G signals to be able to confirm the respective tower that has the cell delivering the signal the gateway is locked onto at the time.

If you haven't reviewed Waveform's guide for the T-Mobile Arcadyan gateway you really should. They have a very good guide.