2 Single band Yagi's vs Dual band Yagi cellular antenna?

[thuor]

Wilson doesn't have a dual band Yagi! Not sure how much gain such a wideband (800MHz all the way to 1900MHz) Yagi antenna would have anyway if it existed. A better approach for maximum gain is to place 2 single band Yagi antennas (a 900MHz and a 1900MHz) and use a splitter/combiner such as http://www.rfwel.com/shop/?target=pr...&cat=62&page=1 to connect them both together to an amplifier or directly to a phone. This splitter/combiner have a spec'd insertion loss of 3dB per port (i.e you loss 3dB of power by adding it into the signal path).

Another advantage of this approach is that now you may orient the Yagis differently and perhaps catch multiple cellular towers. Note that this is only useful if you have mobile users with different cellular carriers as a single carrier would not be transmitting at different frequency bands anyway.

[Berd]

This is an old thread, so things may have changed.
The reason I say; is because Att in Oregon City broadcasts in 2 bands, 850 & 1900. And a dual band is required to get the best reception out of GSM and WCDMA. Here's my experience;
The 1900 Yagi gives me the best reception with 3G but I can't get a signal when I force the phone to GSM.
When I use the 850 yagi I get fantasic GSM reception, but when I force it to 3G I hardly get a signal.

In order to get good reception 3G which Att is broadcasting on the 1900, and great reception with GSM, I have to use a dual-band antenna.

[thuor]

Thanks for the update. Yes AT&T is using PCS frequencies in many markets now so having the flexibilities of both bands is important. We have since started carrying a directional dualband cellular antenna (70 degrees beamwidth at 800 mhz and 60 degrees at 1900mhz plus greater than 15dB Front-to-back ratio). Since these antennas offer 7dBi and 10dBi respecitively in 850/1900 they are significantly better than an omnidirectional antenna and cheaper than running two yagis with a power splitter. Here is an example: http://www.rfwel.com/shop/?target=pr...roduct_id=1555