5G Antennas For Connection To 5G Routers

Many home 5G routers are supplied directly by the mobile networks on monthly rental plans which include the 5G router and SIM card.  For example, EE provide their EE5G Router which is a rebadged Zyxel NR5103 5G Router. 

Other networks may provide 5G routers made by different manufacturers such as ZTE or Huawei, however most have moved away from Huawei 5G routers due to the bad press, however many home users still like the Huawei 5G CPE PRO and purchase these from Amazon, ebay and online retailers such as Millbeck.

These type’s of home 5G broadband routers are supplied as a router and SIM package only and the networks do not offer any accessories such as 5G antennas.  The reason for this is because most customer’s that are paying the high rentals for their 5G router and 5G SIM data plan already know that they have good 5G coverage in their area.  But in many cases, once they get the router installed and start the usual speedtests then they realise that they get a slower 5G download speed indoors than their 5G nobile phone gets outdoors, or that the position that the home user wants to use the 5G router does not get such a good 5G signal.  In these cases you could consider connecting a 5G Antenna to your router.

The first thing you will need to consider is whether you can actuially connect an external 5G antenna to your router.  If we take the example of the Huawei 5G CPEPRO3 roter, this does not have any external antenna connections so you would just need to re-locate the whole router to a position with a better signal.  This may be the case that you install the router in the loft and run power and Ethernet cables to the attic and then connect wireless Access Points inside the house to provide WiFi hotspots that can use the high pseed 5G connection.

Other routers such as the 5GEE Router (Zyxel NR5103) have 4 x external antenna connections on the rear of the router so you could connect an outdoor 5G antenna.  The 4 x antenna ports on the rear of the Zyxel 5G router mean that you need 4×4 5G antennas to get the optimum performance for your 5G internet connection.  You can choose to use a single 4×4 MiMo antenna like the Panorama DWMM4-6-60-5SP which is a single antenna casing which has 4 x 5G antennas inside and is pre-terminated with 4 x 5m antenna cables which will connect to the 4 x antenna ports on the rear of the Zyxel NR5103 5G router.

The DWMM4-6-60-5SP 5G Antenna is omni directional and works on 5G, 4G and 3G network frequencies and can be wall or pole mounted.

You may find that 5m long cables are not enough so you can purchase antenna extension cables to increase the cable length of the 5G antenna and also note that most 5G antennas are supplied with SMA Male antenna connectors so in the case of the Zyxel 5G router (EE 5G Router 2022 model) you will also need TS9 to SMA adapters so you can connect the SMA connector’s of the antenna to the TS9 connectors of the 5G router.

You could also install 4 x sperate 5G antennas if you wanted to, or could install two 2×2 MiMo 5G antennas which have 2 x 5G antennas in the housing with 2 x antenna cables.

As an alternative to using an Omni-Directional 5G Antenna like the Panorama DWMM4-6-60-5SP, you could choose a directional 5G antenna.  This would need to be located outdoors in a position where it could be pointed at the 5G cell tower.  This would give the optimum performance and is especially useful if you are on the fringes of a 5G network signal as a directional 5G antenna has a higher gain than an omni-directional antenna and will pick up a stronger 5G signal from further away.

The ideal choice would be a 4×4 MiMo Directional 5G Antenna like the Panorama WMM4G-6-60 5G Antenna (part code WMM4G-6-60-5SP) which is pre-terminated with 4 x 5m long antenna cables with SMA male connectors.

This directional 5G antenna, pointed at the 5G cell site would provide the ultimate solution for getting your 5G router to receive the best 5G network signal for the optimum 5G download and upload speeds and reliability.

Because of the higher gain of this directional antenna, you could get away with having slightly longer antenna extensions.

We recommend that you always try to keep your antenna cables as short as possible when connecting your 5G router to your outdoor 5G antenna, but it is not always possible.  For an omni-directional antenna we would normally recommend not more than a 10m cable length ie. 5m pre-terminated on the antenna and 5m extensions and for a directional 5G antenna we recommend no more than 15 metres, ie 5m cable pre-terminated on the antenna and 10m antenna extensions.

If you have a very good signal at the 5G antenna location you can probably get away with longer extension leads but it is always down to the individual installation.

Multi Network SIM Cards

A good way to determine which network is best for your 4G or 5G router installation and 5G antenna is to use a multi network SIM card that can connect to all four UK networks and you can then do speed tests on each network and then obtain a large data plan for that particular network.  You can also continue to use the roaming SIM / multi-network sim if you want built-in failover and some providers offer a 500GB per month SIM with a fixed public IP address if you need a fixed IP address for your business.