Do the new 5.8 Ghz cordless phones offer any significant advantages over the 900 Mhz or 2.4 Ghz models?
Of course! The 5.8 GHz phone has more than twice as many gigahertz as the 2.4 GHz, which has more than twice as many as the 900 MHz phone!
Therefore it must be twice as fast, or have twice the range, or…something.
Or so the manufacturers and the RadioShack drones would have you believe.:rolleyes:
They do cost twice as much, though!
They are supposed to offer increased range and clarity, according to the packaging. However, with increasing frequency, electromagnetic radiation in the RF tends to be absorbed more easily by materials in bulding construction, so you probably lose quite a bit of range in many situations
I always thought that the higher the hertz, the better the quality but with lower range. How do the phones work that way- what exactly does the hertz rating work on these phones?
That doesn’t sound quite right - high-freq tends to penetrate better than low freq. Consider the ability to listen to AM radio in the center of a building as compared to FM with its higher frequency.
It depends largely on moisture-content, as well as other factors. Anyone who has satellite TV knows the microwave signal can be blocked by leaves or heavy clouds. These things offer no impediment whatsoever to FM-band broadcasts. And the Navy uses ELF–Extremely Low Frequency (a few hundred kilohertz) to talk to submarines under water, since higher bands won’t penetrate. Many building materials, such as wood, sheetrock, and plaster, are fairly good at holding moisture (even though they FEEL dry), which can strongly attenuate a high-frequency RF signal.
What Q.E.D. said.
This lecture in PDF format discusses the different frequency bands and some of the factors affecting range.
http://www.winlab.rutgers.edu/~narayan/Course/Wless/Lectures02/lect1.pdf
Thanks alot. That’s pretty much what I figured from when I researched the then new 2.4 Ghz when they first came out. I thought maybe 5.8 did something magical. Clearly, it doesn’t.