RBM11G Outdoor Enclosure for LTE 4CA (Quectel EM160G)

Where I live there's no optical fiber available, so the only way to get cable internet is ADSLv2. ADSLv2 has many problems in my location:

• Bad performance (20/1 Mbps)
• Many disconnections (the cable is put really close to trees)
• Expensive (~€50 per month)

So I decided to install an LTE antenna to get the internet working. After looking up some models on the internet (Mikrotik LHGG, Huawei B818), I figured out none of those could fit my needs, which are:

• Outdoor installation
• 4CA for high-performance LTE
• Being as cheap as possible

What I've used:

• Mikrotik RBM11G
• Quectel EM160G ES
• M2 to MPCIE adapter
• Waterproof enclosure

Luckily with version 7 of Router OS, Mikrotik supports Quectel modems by default without the need for any tweaks.

I used an aluminum plate with the regular motherboard brass spacers to install the RouterBoard. I then also built a 90 degrees holder for the antennas, which in my case I chose to be isotropic: I'm just 1km from the BTS, so I don't need much gain, and fitting 4 directional antennas for the 4x4 MIMO would have been tougher.

The final result was pretty satisfying, RSSI is way higher than what I could get with Huawei B818 + external antennas. You might think that 2db SINR is not good enough, but it turns out that using 4CA the SINR gets lower than using a single band and it also depends on how many people are connected to the BTS.

After using this antenna for more than one year with little-to-none downtimes I'm really satisfied that with a DIY build that costs less than half of a Huawei B818, I can get better performance and customization (Huawei's stock firmware is not that good for geeks) and a working internet for 1/3 of what I used to pay with the previous ADSLv2 contract.

To solve this problem, I'm using OpenMPTCP installed on a virtual machine, I'm indeed just using this RouterBoard as a modem.