[daepp]

Details:

We live in a suburb or Los Angeles but in a notoriously weak cell signal area - regardless of cell provider. Claremont is the kind of place that prides itself on no drive thru restaurants, and as I've never seen a cell tower here (and I know about all the disguises) I suspect they have made them difficult to add. So for all intents and purposes we cannot talk on our cell phones at home without help.

We get the Internet via a 400gb cable router. We immediately added a device we bought from Verizon that (I think) acts as a mini-cell site. It connects to my router (via a switch) but hasn't been a whole lot of help. I suspect it would work ok indoors, but the house has 14" walls, a large footprint and over an acre of grounds, so I don't think it's been much help.

So next we added 3 Wireless Access Points (2 Engenius devices mounted under the floors and 1 outdoor Engenius WAP). The are all wired back to the switch with POE Ethernet cables. So it's a wired "mesh" system, and it works seamlessly and well - but it doesn't have sufficient coverage. And since the bulk of our phone calls are made via WiFi calling, we have many no-go-zones when using our phones. Not good.

The areas I need to address are the dead Wifi zones outside in the front, side and rear yard areas, and the 400' +- from our driveway to our home where we'd like to hang on to cellular longer.

Driveway Cellular - hardest one first: We can speak on our cell phones up until we make a 90 deg turn and begin down our driveway. We have excellent line-of site to the 3rd floor attic of our home, and the area is fairly narrow. I was originally looking for WAP with a long narrow range (more on that later), but sometimes in transitioning from cellular to wifi calling there is a lag or dropped call, perhaps a micro-cell site would be better? Is there even such a thing made?

WiFi Dead Zones outisde: one of these areas is large/wider in size, and two others are fairly small. In looking at WAP's etc I cannot tell what their coverage "patterns?" are. I have a very limited understanding of RF and antennas etc, so perhaps if I knew what to look for that would help.

Hopefully I can post some pics or diagrams to give a better picture of the problem.