3DR Radio realistic range?

[Darrell Loh]

I'm wondering what's the furthest distance you guys got with the 3DR Radio that came with Piksi? Mine started to lose connection after 50m on flat ground.

If that is bad, do you guys have recommendation for radio kit that will work for at least 100m?

Thanks!

Darrell

[Michael Oborne]

have a look at the rfd 900, runs the same firmware as the 3dr radio, but is 1w vs 100mw, ive used these up to 2.5 km before.

http://rfdesign.com.au/index.php/rfd900

[Niels Joubert]

I've had success with 3dr radios for up to half a mile in my own tests, and most people report up to a mile of range.

50m is ridiculous, something is crazy about your setup - you might have damaged radios.

[Kevin D'Souza]

When i tested both 900Mhz 3DR Radio(s) on the ground i got that 50m range. So i put one radio on a height of around 20m (a dummy pole),

For your setup go on top of a building or a pole or something and place the module there. 

On 20m Elevation, I got a distance of 1.6km (Kilo Meters) or One Mile with LoS. I ran out of place to go so well i stopeed at 1.6km. 

Read up about radio wave propagation. The waves need a football pattern from node to node. So the higher u place the basestation the better it will be. 

2.4Ghz 60mW XBee Radios can do about 2km with LoS and good BaseStation Elevation (with a +5dB Antenna on the Base and +2dB Antenna on the Rover).

[Blair Burtan]

What you want to look into is the Fresnel Zone.  There are a few online calculators out there that allow you to figure out signal strength, range, antenna heights, etc. 
http://www.proxim.com/products/knowledge-center/calculations/calculations-fresnel-clearance-zone
IIRC, Ubiquity Networks even has a tool that uses the terrain capabilities of Google Maps to do this.  Earlier this year, I spent many weeks on this particular problem for video transmission.  Bottom line: elevation is your friend.  You can improve things with a patch antenna and amplification but there really is no substitute for antenna height.  UAVs don't have this problem because they're up in the air.

[Darrell Loh]

Awesome, I put the antenna up on a 3-meter tripod and I can get around 200m on the ground. 

Thanks guys!