Radio cable selection for outdoor (LoRaWan) antenna

When looking for a cable to connect an antenna, you need to consider different parameters:

  • The cable loss at 868MHz (if corresponding)
  • The connector type

In this post I’ve tried to list some of the mostly used cable and connectors for connecting LoRaWan antennas.

Cable loss & mechanical characteristics

There are a lot of different cables. I’ve tried from different source to identify the 50 Ohm one and the main interesting characteristics like the loss per meter and diameter. It helps to get a choice. The loss depends on frequency so I did my best to find information at 868Mhz and tried to interpolated the loss when I did not had the value at the right frequency. Feel free to comment if you know website with good reference on some of these to improve the documentation. Particularly on the Rigid / Semi-Rigid / Flexible status. Eventually Indoor/Outdoor usage.

Type of cableLoSS / MdiameteRStyleConnectorPrice Indication
LMR-600~0,08 dBm15 mmSMA TypeN10€ / m
LMR-400~0,10 dBm10 mmSMA TypeN5€ / m
HDF-400~0.13 dBm10 mmSemi-RigidSMA TypeN2€ / m
LMR-300~0,15 dBm8 mmSMA TypeN3€ / m
RG-401~0,18 dBm6,4 mmSemi-RigidSMA16€ / m
LMR-240~0.24 dBm6 mmSMA TypeN2€ / m
RG-142~0,25 dBm5 mmFlexibleSMA TypeN10€-15€ /m
RG-402~0,25 dBm3,6 mmSemi-RigidSMA10€-15€ / m
RG-213/214~0.26 dBm10 mmSMA TypeN7€ / m
RG-8X~0.42 dBm6,4 mmFlexibleSMA TypeN1€-2€ / m
RG-405~0,45 dBm2,1 mmSemi-RigidSMA1€-2€ /m
RG-58~0,50 dBm5 mmFlexibleSMA TypeN0,75€ / m
HDF-200~0,59 dBm5 mmSMA TypeN2€ – 3€ /m
RG-178~1,00 dBm2 mmFlexibleSMA TypeN3€ / m
RG-174~1,00 dBm2,5 mmFlexibleSMA TypeN1€ / m
50 Ohm RF cables selection

Connectors

There are different type of connector in use for antennas and gateways. Usually, the gateways and indoor antennas use SMA connectors when outdoor antennas use Type-N connector.

The SMA / RP-SMA family is a bit a mess with 4 different connectors:

SMA Male / SMA Female / RP-SMA Male / RP-SMA Female

For the Type N we also have Male and Female

With a such number of different connector in use, the number of adaptator is really large. According to my experience, even if you try to have them all in stock, you will always missed thee one you need !

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