Intab Tinytag Connect, User Manual

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3.7 RADIO CONFIGURATION
Reducing the range in this way will have an effect on the mesh network connections established by the
loggers. In some circumstances the mesh can be less robust for loggers which are within range of more
than 20 other loggers.
Reducing the range can also increase battery lifetime. It is possible to reduce the total amount of radio
traffic processed by one device, by allowing it to ignore irrelevant distant traffic. However, this may also
have the opposite effect, if it results in increasing the number of hops required for data to reach the
receiver.
The radio range may be increased by increasing the sensitivity:
Change in dB Radio Range
0dB 100% of range
+3dB ~130% of range
+6dB ~180% of range
Sensitivity values above 0dB will adversely affect the power consumption of a device.
The higher sensitivity means that it is less able to distinguish between good signals and background
noise, and will spend extra battery power decoding spurious signals.
For a device with a mains power supply this may not be a problem.
Note that this figure is a typical measurement, and not a guaranteed minimum. It may be affected by
many factors including the surrounding physical environment (buildings, equipment, etc.) or other local
radio transmitters.
Transmit Power
The radio range can also be adjusted by changing the transmit power. The default configuration is for
devices to transmit at their maximum power. If you wish to reduce the range of a logger the transmit
power may be reduced in steps with the slider control. Minimum power will result in a range of typically
10% of normal. In general it is preferable to reduce sensitivity before reducing the transmit power in
order to reduce the radio range. This ensures the signal to noise ratio is maximised.
Very Slow Logging Intervals
Some of the connection timings above depend on the logging interval. The logging interval affects the
time taken for a logger to connect to the Connect Gateway, because that service will normally only
discover that a logger is present when it transmits a measurement.
Other information which can also trigger this connection process is transmitted hourly; therefore
loggers with very slow logging intervals will still connect without unreasonable delay.