Hey Chuck,
Thanks for this! Do you have a ballpark idea of the
receive threshold performance for these radios?
Online I'm reading indications that ~80dBm is the absolute
floor of something that's marginally reliable; but this source
seems to indicate it is referring to consumer devices.
Assuming antennas with a gain of 12dBi at both ends, and 500mW
Tx power, my link study suggests a total path loss of ~140dB,
and receive at about -94dBm. Rokland sells a 2.4GHz panel
with a claimed 19dBi gain and a 17˚ beam width, which would
hypothetically get me to around -86dBm. If I paid for
dedicated hardware at both ends, and had a 19dBi panel at
prestige, I could get myself into the yellow at about
~79.86dBm. It is possible, though, that these commercial
radios are more sensitive than I'm assuming.
I have field experience with the 915MHz LoRa hardware, but
I'm sort of guessing with this stuff. And perhaps more
importantly, as my brother says; in theory, practice
matches theory; in practice, it does not. Considering
the low cost of entry, the best course of action might just be
to put up an antenna and see what happens.
Cheers!
Steve