The Huawei B593 LTE discussion thread

Azimuth said:
I had this all wrong .... The old XPOL-0002, what we all currently have, is this one:

View attachment 130991

:(
Click to expand...


Weeellll .... it's not quite that bad !

The whole picture looks like this :

20140709 XPOL-0002 V1 gain plot.JPG
20140709 XPOL-0002 V1 VSWR plot.JPG

So between 2300 and 2400MHz (the TM TDD range), it still has pretty reasonable gain, though the VSWR (matching) is a bit lumpy. But that's not unusual for these wideband antennas.
In short : When used in the Telkom Mobile band (2300-2400MHz), the existing XPOL-A0002 (the "V1") won't be nearly as good as the TM-specific XPOL-A0006 (of course), but it should still work reasonably well.

On the new "V2" version (the XPOL-A0002-V2), I see that Poynting have ironed out the spike in the VSWR over the 2300-2400MHz band.
 
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jcheek said:
In short : When used in the Telkom Mobile band (2300-2400MHz), the existing XPOL-A0002 (the "V1") won't be nearly as good as the TM-specific XPOL-A0006 (of course), but it should still work reasonably well.
Click to expand...
Correct, but in MIMO mode it is not so obvious. There are more parameters to consider other than gain and VSWR. We can't see it on specs.
 
jcheek said:
Weeellll .... it's not quite that bad !

The whole picture looks like this :

XPOL-A0002 gain
XPOL-A0002 vswr

So between 2300 and 2400MHz (the TM TDD range), it still has pretty reasonable gain, though the VSWR (matching) is a bit lumpy. But that's not unusual for these wideband antennas.
In short : When used in the Telkom Mobile band (2300-2400MHz), the existing XPOL-A0002 (the "V1") won't be nearly as good as the TM-specific XPOL-A0006 (of course), but it should still work reasonably well.

On the new "V2" version (the XPOL-A0002-V2), I see that Poynting have ironed out the spike in the VSWR over the 2300-2400MHz band.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure where you got your info from... I got the frequency gain chart directly from Poynting.

View attachment 131065

I should also mention I'm using my XPOL-0002 right now with TM LTE while waiting for my Afrihost SIM. It does absolutely....squat. No before and after difference.
 
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Azimuth said:
I'm not sure where you got your info from... I got the frequency gain chart directly from Poynting.
I should also mention I'm using my XPOL-0002 right now with TM LTE while waiting for my Afrihost SIM. It does absolutely....squat. No before and after difference.
Click to expand...

Same source, see attachment #1.
Poynting publish datasheets with slightly different twists (as in, more or less data) for their various target markets. They're starting to pick up a version control problem ;)

When you say "I'm using my XPOL-0002 right now with TM LTE ... It does absolutely....squat." what do you mean ? You get no improvement versus using just the B593's internal antennas ? Or no difference relative to using your XPOL-A0006 ?
 

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I don't have an XPOL-06, never got around to obtaining one. Now that I'm shifting to Afrihost LTE, my XPOL-0002 is for that and the internal antennas are for the odd occasion I fall back onto Telkom Mobile LTE (excess voice contract data).

What I meant is that I get no improvement in gain compared to internal antennas; -78dBm before and after; same before and after speed tests.
 
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Azimuth, just a thought :

The polar plot for the XPOL-0002 (see same datasheet in post above) suggests that the gain "sweet spot" can be at very different azimuth angles depending on what frequency band is in use.

XPOL-0002 polar plot.JPG

If we make the (logical?) assumption that 0 degrees means the "front"of the antenna, ie on a line perpendicular to the back plate, then maximum gain at 1900MHz (blue trace) occurs virtually along that line. By contrast, the gain at 0 degrees at 2600MHz is about 18dB lower than that (green trace). The "sweet spot" at 2600MHz is at almost 90 degrees (ie side on).

This might no translate exactly to operation at TM frequencies (2300-2400MHz) and in the real world; but the clue is that to get the best performance, you may need to change the Azimuth (haha) away from what seems intuitively to be "perfect alignment".

This is a consequence of the XPOL-0002 being such a complex thing inside, ie both ultra-wideband and dual polarised. By contrast, the polar plot for a "simple"antenna like an LPDA is dead easy - maximum gain is always straight out the front at 0 degrees:

LPDA-0092 polar plot.jpg"

Maybe give it a try, if you haven't already ?

By the way, has anyone managed to get a full datasheet on the XPOL-0006 ? Because it's a TM-specific design (in SA, at least), there's no full datasheet on the Poynting Europe website. But I suspect it has a somewhat simpler polar plot, being a narrow-band design.
 
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Yip, it's why I chose my forum name. :p Thanks, I'm going to look at this over the weekend. Long wondered about antenna adjustments. I've take a stab at head on alignment and didn't actually think to ever offset it. Would be nice to measure the gain on an instrument but I'll have to use the trusty trial and error method.

As an aside, I do wish my Afrihost LTE SIM would arrive now, it's been over a week since ordering.
 
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jcheek said:
By the way, has anyone managed to get a full datasheet on the XPOL-0006 ? Because it's a TM-specific design (in SA, at least), there's no full datasheet on the Poynting Europe website. But I suspect it has a somewhat simpler polar plot, being a narrow-band design.
Click to expand...

Here you go. ;)

Doesn't seem to be a European release so not on the Poynting GmbH site.
 
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Very irregular shape on secondary port. Swapping plugs will be needed. It doesn't say which port has regular shape. It should be plugged to the router's main port (also unknown). It will be one which is used to logon to network, work in normal mode and also report signal strenght. In other words, lots of experiments have to be done, but this information must be available from Poynting.
 
B880 has some nice new features and is the later model. You won't however find it for sale in SA.
 
B880 is on eBay, looks interesting, especially the 73 model which should work with all SA LTE.

Just not sure if it is not overkill for me, especially since I live in a poor reception area.
 
Jola said:
Just not sure if it is not overkill for me, especially since I live in a poor reception area.
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Probably you will benefit for year or two, before prices drop down and everybody can afford it.
 
Edit: seems Mr Angla was a bot that got banned. :(
 
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I see a couple people are using the new B880 now, such as kurtg.

IMG_0514_zps5208ff5d.jpg


Definitely not a SA mainstream product though. If it does surface here from official channels, we can start a new thread for it. I particularly don't like the SMA ports on top of the device. :(
 
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Azimuth said:
Mine always says "firmware up to date".
Click to expand...

On my unit the following is the case :

1. Current version (under Home / Product Information) is reported as "V200R001B270D00SP00C00" dated 20 Dec 2013.

2. "HTTP Update" option under "Firmware Update" reports "The router is already using the latest software version."

3. "CWMP Update" always returns "Update failed. Failed to download the update file. Click here to try again."

How does this compare to other units out there ?
 
I've owned four B593's now over a period of 10 months and I've never seen a firmware update. Huawei only seem to release FW updates for their MiFi devices and not the LTE CPEs.
 
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