I'm looking into getting a cell repeater for my home. I live in a rural area with not a lot of service inside my house, but four bars outside. The repeater I'm looking at uses an omni directional antenna that draws in signal from multiple towers for multiple carriers. My question is, since this system uses an omni antenna, wouldn't any antenna do? Such as a CB radio antenna? The way I look at it the antenna draws in all types of signals but its left up to the inside receiver what type of signal to use? Am I wrong on this?
It is more on the receiver. However your chosen antenna has to be sensitive to the frequencies both being absorbed and transmitted back out. If it's sold seperately, and you think an existing antenna will work, no harm giving it a shot right?
Remember your phone works in two directions. The idea kind of works for receiving signal over a relatively narrow bandwidth but there is a huge difference between CB and cellular frequencies. It will be much less efficient out of band, and a CB antenna will not be designed to handle UHF. Even the standard PL259 coaxial conneector for HF (CB) doesn't work well for UHF (cellular). For retransmitting your signal back to the cell tower it simply won't work at all.
