IMPROVISED MODEM BROADBAND ANTENNA

Chapter 1
Problem and Its Background
Introduction
The internet nowadays could be considered as a secondary need in everyone’s lives. Most devices nowadays were produced to have an internet connection to allow surfing. The internet nowadays evolved so rapidly in our everyday lives. It serves as a medium of communication and it also passes information across the globe. There are some questions though about the internet, on it works or how could it provide our daily needs.
Many of us have many questions about the internet, especially about its signals. Internet users in rural areas are frequently experiencing dropped signals from their broadband modems. Those dropped signals will lead to incompletion of information and communication.
This Improvised modem broadband antenna could answer and provide solutions for the problem of dropped signals experienced by internet users. As this research continue to progress, there are a lot of innovations observed that can manipulate the internet signals by using some recycled devices that can be found in anyone’s homes.
This study will be quite interesting for the involvement of the internet in the modern era, and for the reason that this will be very useful for internet users that does not want an occurrence of dropped signals in their broadband modem.

Background of the Study The increasing number internet users led us to do this study. This study attempts to end the problem that most internet users encounter, which is having a slow internet connection or better known as the “World Wide Wait”. Most of the vivid modem companies suggest their product only be used if the location is capable of working with signals. On this study, we produced an effective solution wherein any modem can be used and still be effective even there is an occurrence of dropped signals, and this can be done with the help of an antenna. The modem’s signal could be affected by some barriers. One example of this barrier is the distance between the modem and the connection points. When the distance between the modem and the connection points are slightly far apart, then the signals that will be received by the connection points will be slower. Another barrier would be the number of walls/interferences, the internet’s signal will be faster if there will be little number of interferences. (Bisht, Connor. "Broadband to the Home: Trends and Issues") Listed above are some of the problem that led the researchers to create this modem broadband antenna. Through this research, it can help boost the modem’s signal and will minimize the difficulty of the internet user with its speed, thus the internet user can enjoy surfing the internet all day long without any problems.

Statement of the Problem
The internet nowadays plays a big role in our lives, and due to this reason, there are many internet connections that have been invented for us. Of these internet connections, the USB Broadband modem is one of the most popular for its cheap price compared to others.
The researchers aim to answer the following questions: 1. Does the USB Broadband modem with the improvised antenna have any difference with the modem without the antenna in terms of speed and signal? 2. Can the Antenna boost the modem’s signal during the peak hours of surfing? 3. What are the possible effects of the following factors in the effectiveness of the antenna? * Diameter and Radius of the can/stainless basin * Position of the modem * Length of the USB Cable * Weather * Location
Hypothesis
* There is no difference between USB Broadband Modem with improvised antenna and the USB Broadband without improvise antenna in terms of speed and signal.

Null Hypothesis * There will be a difference between USB Broadband Modem with improvised antenna and the USB Broadband without improvise antenna in terms of speed and signal.
Alternative Hypothesis * There will be no difference between the signals of USB Broadband with improvised antenna and the one without in terms of speed and signal
General Objective: * This study aims to have an alternative solution to prevent the dropped signals of USB Broadband Modems.
Specific Objective: Specifically, the study stands to: * Provide an improvise antenna for your USB Broadband Modems using recycled materials and provide a cheaper option to save money. * To satisfy the Broadband Modem users living in a remote areas with their Internet Connection. * To minimize the complaints on slow internet connection.
Significance of the Study
This study stands to benefit the following: * Broadband Internet users – especially to those customers residing in rural areas whose internet connections became unstable. It will be cheaper for the things needed to create the antenna can be easily found in one’s home. * Environment – this study will help or benefit the environment in a way that the materials used for the research are recycled. * Broadband/ Internet providers – will lessen the number of complaints they receive from customers experiencing dropped signals in their internet connection.

Scope and Delimitation of the Study
Recycled antenna for boosting your USB Broadband Signal is only applicable for those users living in a remote area. This study focuses in boosting Broadband Internet Signals with the help of an improvised antenna which came from recycled materials. With this antenna, the signals can be stable during nights, which is said to be the peak hours of the internet. This improvised antenna can reach its full effectiveness for those users residing in rural areas and also for those in urban areas with low internet signal. Avoid placing the antenna beside high buildings or trees for it will became a barrier. This antenna can boost your internet signals, although at times, it can’t.

Definition of Terms
UTP – “Unshielded Twisted Pair” it comes with each pair uniquely color coded when it is packaged in multiple pairs. Different uses such as analog, digital, and Ethernet require different pair multiples.

USB – “Universal Serial Bus” cables, connectors and protocols used for connection, communication and power supply between computers and electronic devices.

GND – “Ground” may be the reference point in an electrical circuit from which other voltages are measured, or a common return path for electric current, or a direct physical connection to the Earth.

D - – “Data –“

D + – Data +

+5V – VCC +5 VDC

Broadband – The term broadband refers to any type of transmission technique that carries several data channels over a common wire. DSL service, for example, combines separate voice and data channels over a single telephone line. In DSL, voice fills the low end of the frequency spectrum and data fills the high end.

Broadband Modems – Broadband modems that are part of cable and DASL Internet service use more advanced signaling techniques to achieve dramatically higher network speeds than traditional modems.

Parabolic Antenna – A parabolic antenna is an antenna that uses a parabolic reflector, a curved surface with the cross-sectional shape of a parabola, to direct the radio waves.

Analog or Analogue signal – An analogue signal is any continuous signal for which the time varying feature (variable) of the signal is a representation of some other time varying quantity, i.e., analogous to another time varying signal. It differs from a digital signal in terms of small fluctuations in signal which are meaningful.

Chapter 2
Review of Related Literature The idea of using parabolic reflectors for radio antennas was taken from optics, where the power of a parabolic mirror to focus light into a beam has been known since classical antiquity. The designs of some specific types of parabolic antenna, such as the Cassegrain and Gregorian, come from similarly named analogous types of reflecting telescope, which were invented by astronomers during the 15th century.
German physicist Heinrich Hertz constructed the world's first parabolic reflector antenna in 1888. The antenna was a cylindrical parabolic reflector made of zinc sheet metal supported by a wooden frame, and had a spark-gap excited dipole along the focal line. Its aperture was 1.2 meters wide, with a focal length of 0.12 meters, and was used at an operating frequency of about 450 MHz. With two such antennas, one used for transmitting and the other for receiving, Hertz demonstrated the existence radio waves which had been predicted by James Clerk Maxwell some 22 years earlier. (Stutzman, Thiele, 2012)
The first parabolic antenna used for satellite communications was constructed in 1962 at Goonhilly in Cornwall, England, UK to communicate with the Telstar satellite.
A parabolic antenna is an antenna that uses a parabolic reflector, a curved surface with the cross-sectional shape of a parabola, to direct the radio waves. The most common form is shaped like a dish and is popularly called a dish antenna or parabolic dish. The main advantage of a parabolic antenna is that it is highly directive; it functions similarly to a searchlight or flashlight reflector to direct the radio waves in a narrow beam, or receive radio waves from one particular direction only. Parabolic antennas have some of the highest gains, that is they can produce the narrowest beam width angles, of any antenna type. In order to achieve narrow beamwidths, the parabolic reflector must be much larger than the wavelength of the radio waves used, so parabolic antennas are used in the high frequency part of the radio spectrum, at UHF and microwave (SHF) frequencies, at which wavelengths are small enough that conveniently sized dishes can be used. (Straw,2000)
A parabolic cylinder reflector antenna has been designed for high-power radar observations of signals scattered from the ionospheric plasma at a frequency of 224 MHz. The antenna is constructed with an offset feed system to reduce aperture blockage. Efficient illumination for circular polarization using crossed dipoles is achieved by means of primary beam forming, which amounts to the construction of a polarization sensitive corner reflector. The measured aperture efficiency is 64%, and the gain 43.6 dB. The antenna can be mechanically steered through 90° in the meridian plane, and the beam can be offset from this plane by ±21.3° by manual phase steering of the 128-element line feed. The width of the aperture is 40 m, and the length 120 m. The reflector is constructed in four 30-m-long sections which can be individually steered. The RF distribution system is such that the two antenna halves can be operated and pointed completely independently. The paper describes the design considerations, the construction, and the testing of the performance of the completed antenna. (Hagfors,Kisdal, 1982)
A novel design is introduced to obtain both pencil-beam and cosecant-squared radiation patterns by using the same modified parabolic reflector antenna structure fed by an H-plane horn feeder which can be adjusted as symmetric or asymmetric feeder by changing the bottom flare angle. The analytical regularization method (ARM) is used as a fast and accurate way to solve the problem of E-polarized wave diffraction by parabolic shaped perfectly electrical conductive (PEC) cylindrical reflector with finite thickness. The numerical procedure is initially verified by the analytical and numerical methods, and the calculated radiation characteristics are presented for the proposed antenna configurations. (Okan, Yurduseven, 2011)
A parabolic cylinder reflector antenna has been designed for high-power radar observations of signals scattered from the ionospheric plasma at a frequency of 224 MHz. The antenna is constructed with an offset feed system to reduce aperture blockage. Efficient illumination for circular polarization using crossed dipoles is achieved by means of primary beam forming, which amounts to the construction of a polarization sensitive corner reflector. The measured aperture efficiency is 64%, and the gain 43.6 dB. The antenna can be mechanically steered through 90° in the meridian plane, and the beam can be offset from this plane by ±21.3° by manual phase steering of the 128-element line feed. The width of the aperture is 40 m, and the length 120 m. The reflector is constructed in four 30-m-long sections which can be individually steered. The RF distribution system is such that the two antenna halves can be operated and pointed completely independently. The paper describes the design considerations, the construction, and the testing of the performance of the completed antenna. (Wade, 1994)
A “cantenna” is a brand name for a dummy load. It is a directional waveguide antenna for long-range Wi-Fi used to increase the range of (or discover) a wireless network.
Although some designs are based on a Pringles Potato Chip Can, in reality this tube is too narrow to be practical. However, a cantenna can be made from various “cans” or “tubes” of an appropriate diameter. The designs include a pole mount to elevate the cantenna.
At 2.4 GHz, losses can occur if the cable from the cantenna to the Wi-Fi circuitry is too long. A more efficient cantenna can be made by minimizing this length or connecting the cantenna directly to the Wi-Fi circuitry
The original cantenna was a 50 ohm resistive load that amateur radio enthusiast used. It is a simple product that can be created. It can be used to transmit and receive signals. Most users make a Cantenna in order to use a wireless network that is out of their computer’s reach. (Pelaginox,2008)
The cantenna is useful for extending a local-area network (LAN); the tiny design makes them ideal for mobile applications, such as war driving. Its design is so simple and ubiquitous that is often the first antenna that Wi-Fi experimenters learn to build. Even the Secret Service has taken an interest in the Can Antenna.
A group of seven companies began development on USB in 1994: Compaq, DEC, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NEC and Nortel. The goal was to make it fundamentally easier to connect external devices to PCs by replacing the multitude of connectors at the back of PCs, addressing the usability issues of existing interfaces, and simplifying software configuration of all devices connected to USB, as well as permitting greater data rates for external devices. The first silicon for USB was made by Intel in 1995. ( Bhatt, 2009)
USB 3.0 was initially announced on January 2013. It is the third major version of the Universal Serial Bus (USB) standard for computer connectivity.USB 3.0 adds a new transfer mode called "SuperSpeed," (distinguishable from USB 2.0 by either the blue colour of the port or the initials SS) capable of transferring data at up to 5 Gbit/s – more than ten times as fast as the 480 Mbit/s top speed of USB 2.0.A tin can, tin (especially in British English), steel can, or a can, is a sealed container for the distribution or storage of goods, composed of thin metal. (http://www.usb.org/press/USB-IF_Press_Releases/SuperSpeed_10Gbps_USBIF_Final.pdf)
The "SuperSpeed" bus provides for a transfer mode at a nominal rate of 5.0 Gbit/s, in addition to the three existing transfer modes. Accounting for encoding overhead, the raw data throughput is 4 Gbit/s, and the specification considers it reasonable to achieve 3.2 Gbit/s (0.4 GB/s or 400 MB/s) or more in practice.[6] All data is sent as a stream of eight bits (one byte segments) which are scrambled and then converted into a 10-bit format. This helps to reduce electromagnetic interference (EMI). The inverse process is carried out at the receiving end. Scrambling is implemented using a free running linear feedback shift register (LFSR). The LFSR is reset whenever a COM symbol is sent or received. (http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/usb_30_spec_122012.zip, 2013)
The tin can was patented in 1813 by the English inventor Peter Durand, based on experimental work by the Frenchman Nicolas Appert. He did not produce any food cans himself, but sold his patent to two other Englishmen, Bryan Donkin and John Hall,who set up a commercial canning factory and by 1813 were producing their first canned goods for the British Army.
Early cans were sealed with lead soldering, which led to lead poisoning. Famously, in the 1845 Arctic expedition of Sir John Franklin, crew members suffered from severe lead poisoning after three years of eating canned food.
In 1901, the American Can Company was founded which, at the time, produced 90% of United States tin cans. (Stolk, 1960)
Modems grew out of the need to connect teletype machines over ordinary phone lines instead of more expensive leased lines which had previously been used for current loop-based teleprinters and automated telegraphs. In 1943, IBM adapted this technology to their unit record equipment and was able to transmit punched cards at 25 bits/second. News wire services in 1920s used multiplex equipment that met the definition, but the modem function was incidental to the multiplexing function, so they are not commonly included in the history of modems. (Books LCC, 2011)
The Internet has irrevocably become a very important tool in development. As a platform for information sharing, communication, socialization and entertainment; it is increasingly becoming a must to have the facility whether in a home, school, hospital, company and elsewhere. In recent years we have seen the invent and widespread use of wireless Internet as compared to wired Internet. It is said that wireless technology is more handy than the wired technology as it is easy to deploy and more convenient due to its mobility. Despite the fact that the fraction of people with access to the Internet is far higher in rich than poor countries, it is inevitable to accept the fact that developing countries like Malawi, certainly need the Internet in order to bridge the digital divide. Of particular interest in this paper is the use of the Internet in the education sector and specifically the case of Mzuzu University. The paper focuses on one of the challenges that exist at the University as regards access to the Internet which is poor signal reception in most areas and then explores one of the possible solutions. The proposed solution leans towards development of low cost equipment and in this case the cantenna. (Chavula, 2008)
Parabolic dish antennas can provide extremely high gains at microwave frequencies. A 2- foot dish at 10 GHz can provide more than 30 dB of gain. The gain is only limited by the size of the parabolic reflector; a number of hams have dishes larger than 20 feet, and occasionally a much larger commercial dish is made available for amateur operation, like the 150-foot one at the Algonquin Radio Observatory in Ontario, used by VE3ONT for the 1993 EME Contest.
These high gains are only achievable if the antennas are properly implemented, and dishes have more critical dimensions than horns and lenses. I will try to explain the fundamentals using pictures and graphics as an aid to understanding the critical areas and how to deal with them. In addition, a computer program, HDL_ANT is available for the difficult calculations and details, and to draw templates for small dishes in order to check the accuracy of the parabolic surface. (Wade,1994)

Chapter 3
Methodology
Materials:
The materials needed for the study would be a Tin can, USB Cable, any broadband internet device, pliers, glue stick and gun, electrical tape, hammer, galvanized scissor, ruler, popsicle sticks, and a marker.
INPUT
* Materials * Desktop computer or laptop * Broadband
PROCESS
* Preparation of materials * Procedures in doing the investigatory project.
OUTPUT
* Improvised Modem Broadband Antenna
(IMBA)
Feedback
Conceptual Framework

Procedure:
Place the USB Modem at the center of the focal point of the antenna
Sketch the design of the antenna on a piece of paper
Prepare all the materials needed

Observe the signal of the Broadband modem
Connect the USB Cable to computer unit/laptop

General Procedure:
Before anything else, be careful in handling sharp materials. First prepare all the materials needed. Then, on a piece of paper, sketch the design of the antenna. Next, place the USB modem at the center of the focal point of the antenna. After placing the USB modem, connect thee USB cable to the computer unit/laptop and finally, observe the signal.

Place the USB Modem in the rectangular hole of the can and seal it with electrical tape
Cut a rectangular hole in the can using the Galvanized scissor

Place the popsicle sticks on the closed part of the can that will serve as the base

Procedures in Constructing the Antenna: Using the Galvanized scissor, cut a rectangular hole in the can, and make sure that the can has no sharp edges. Afterwards, place the USB modem in the rectangular hole of the can and seal it with the help of the electrical tape. Then, place the popsicle sticks on the closed part of the can which will serve as the base.

BUDGET The budget needed for the study will be 300 Php or above. If the user already has a broadband modem, he/she will be spending money not more than 300 Php for the materials needed in this research. If the user does not have a broadband, then, the price needed will vary depending on the plan of the broadband bought. It could be as low as P1100 if there user does not have a broadband.

TIMETABLE The time needed for constructing the antenna will be around 1-2 hours, and the overall-time needed here will be around 3-4 hours. This can be absolutely done in one day. TIME | ACTIVITY | First Hour | Make the Antenna | Second Hour | Place the USB Modem in the antenna | Third Hour | Test the signals of the improvised modem broadband antenna |

BIBLIOGRAPHY * Naveen Bisht; James Connor. "Broadband to the Home: Trends and Issues" International Engineering Consortium. p. 1. * http://www.pelaginox.com/pc/pc-cantenna.html (Saved from: http://web.archive.org/web/20080411034630/http://www.pelaginox.com/pc/pc-cantenna.html), April 11,2008 * Stutzman, Warren L.; Gary A. Thiele (2012). Antenna Theory and Design, 3rd Ed.. US: John Wiley & Sons. pp. 391–392. * Straw, J. (2000). Keep Your Eyes Off the Screen: Online Cheating and What We Can Do About It. Academic Exchange Quarterly 4(3), 21-25 * T. Hagfors, P. S. Kildal, H. J. Kärcher, B. Liesenkötter, G. Schröer, Radio Science Volume 17, Issue 6, pages 1607–1621, November-December 1982 * "Intel ad campaign remakes researchers into rock stars".Bhatt. May 9, 2009. * Pan, Hui; Polishuk, Paul (eds.). 1394 Monthly Newsletter. Information Gatekeepers. pp. 7–9. GGKEY:H5S2XNXNH99. * Sony Playstation 3 60 GB, "Consoles", CNet (review) * American Can Company: Revolution in Containers, Stolk; Address April 21, 1960 - Printed July 1960. * http://blogtext.org/hardwarezone/article/print/363849.html * http://www.qsl.net/n1bwt/chap4.pdf * http://www.researchgate.net/publication/248548057_Compact_Parabolic_Reflector_Antenna_Design_with_Cosecant-Squared_Radiation_Pattern * http://www.wideopenaccess.net/files/webform/submission/paper.pdf * http://www.qsl.net/n1bwt/chap4.pdf * http://www.usb.org/press/USB-IF_Press_Releases/SuperSpeed_10Gbps_USBIF_Final.pdf