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A guide to wireless range and repeaters

Whether you’re looking to create a smart home or to enhance your existing smart home, it’s important to understand the basics of wireless range and network

repeaters. This guide, written by the SmartThings engineering team, is full of useful tips to help ensure that your smart home network is as reliable and powerful as

possible.

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Introduction

Imagine the following conversation:

“How many friends do you have?”

“Well, that depends. Are you counting Facebook friends or just close friends? Friends I had a long time ago but no longer keep in touch with? Acquaintances that

could be considered friends under a broad definition…?”

“Um, just simplify it for me and give me a single number.”

This is how we engineers feel when people ask, “What’s the wireless range?” It’s an incredibly complicated topic, but the question implicitly demands a single

simple answer.

This article will not only explain the factors that affect wireless range, but also present some tips on how to maximize wireless range in your SmartThings home

network.

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No, do not bring in da noise

Surprisingly, probably the most important factor that determines the range between a device and your Hub has nothing to do with the device or the Hub—it’s

actually the amount of electromagnetic “noise” that is present in the environment.

Think of it this way: Remember the last time you went to a loud club, and how you could barely have a conversation with the person directly in front of you? No

matter how loud that person spoke, the “noise” around you was so much louder that his voice just didn’t carry as far.

Wireless devices have a similar problem. Because of the electromagnetic noise from various devices, your home automation devices are constantly fighting to

hear each other.

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Here are a few things that affect wireless noise:

Wi-Fi access points (both yours and your neighbors’)

cell phones

microwave ovens

baby monitors

ﬂuorescent lights

wireless game controllers

consumer devices that form their own private Wi-Fi networks (e.g., Roku, Sonos)

cheap (or defective) electronics that saturate the airwaves with electromagnetic radiation

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Since ZigBee works in the 2.4 GHz frequency space, it is most affected by 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi networks and microwave ovens. Z-Wave, on the other hand, works in the

900 MHz frequency space and is most affected by cell phones and baby monitors. These are just examples; unfortunately, there are lots of electronic devices out

there constantly adding to the background noise.

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(https://smartthings.com)

Summary of content (6 pages)

PAGE 1
(https://smartthings.com) SmartThings Support Search Support SEARCH (https://support.smartthings.com/) A guide to wireless range and repeaters Whether you’re looking to create a smart home or to enhance your existing smart home, it’s important to understand the basics of wireless range and network repeaters. This guide, written by the SmartThings engineering team, is full of useful tips to help ensure that your smart home network is as reliable and powerful as possible.
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Here are some actions you can(https://smartthings.com) take to keep this noise down: Switch to 5 GHz Wi-Fi The ZigBee radios in the SmartThings Hub and devices share the same frequency as 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi. Switching to a 5 GHz Wi-Fi network is like going to a dance club where all the music and people are really loud, but they are all aliens and are at a frequency that is too high for your ears to hear, so it doesn’t sound loud at all! Change your Wi-Fi channel The 2.
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(https://smartthings.com) Fixing this depends on whether we are working with ZigBee or Z-Wave devices. For ZigBee devices, things have to get worse before they get better. The device has to completely lose communication with its parent (the Hub in the example above) for it to look for a new, better parent. Fortunately, this is easy to do: turn off the Hub.
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(https://smartthings.com) Angles, Orientations, and Reﬂections While we’re talking about wireless antennas, note that an antenna’s angle/orientation (relative to the device it’s communicating with) can have a pretty big effect on how well this communication works. First, let’s look at the ideal antenna (for home automation), one which emits electromagnetic radiation in all directions with equal power. Yup, it’s a balloon.
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(https://smartthings.com) Here is a pretty good location for the Hub, in the corner of a room of the house, with the maximum power orientations pointing towards the center of the house. Here is a less-good location—the hub is near a window and the maximum power orientations are pointing out the window and away from the house. There are many, many factors that affect sensor range, including ones we haven’t even mentioned in this article, (like the air temperature, humidity—and yes— even sunspot activity).
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(https://smartthings.com) Reach us by phone 1-800 SAMSUNG 1-800-726-7864 9 am to 6 pm Paciﬁc Time, Monday through Saturday Reach us by email A member of our SmartThings Support staff will respond as soon as possible. () Reach us on live chat 9 am to 5 pm Paciﬁc Time, Monday through Saturday Was this article helpful? Facebook TwitterLinkedIn (/hc/en-us/signin?return_to=https%3A%2F%2Fsupport.smartthings.