tv antenna booster as power amplifer

I built a small transmitter on 600MHz, to transfer the signal from my surveillance camera . The power is very low, about 10mW. I was wondering if i can increase it using a simple TV antenna preamplifiers mounted on the other hand .

depending on the devices in the TV antenna preamp you may get up to ~ 100mW very subjective to devices and design of amp.

much easier is to build a small amp based around say a AH1 (or others in the family) MMIC for 100-200mW
the AH102 http://www.datasheetcatalog.org/data...8/285294_1.pdf provides an easy 400mW @ 1000MHz

cheers
Dave
VK2TDN

If you mean boost it at the receiving end with a pre-amplifier, yes it might help. 10mW is actually quite a lot of power for a surveillance camera modulator, if possible I would check for the cable type being used first and make sure it was low-loss co-ax and had good RF joints if they are used. The more common approach is to send the baseband video along the cable and either connect it directly to a video input or convert it to RF at the monitor end.

As with all RF cable systems, you get better results by ensuring enough signal is transmitted than by adding extra amplification at the receiver. Receive amplifiers boost interference picked up on the cable as well as the signal you want, they also add their own internally generated noise.

Brian.

Feeding the TV booster with 10 Milliwatt and getting X output? Coz the TV booster output will be naturally lesser than 10Mw coz it is intended to connect to a TV antenna tuner where more power may damage the TV tuner's front end. Too the frequncy of the booster is determined and tunned by the Coils inside which will have to be re-tunned. But still using in the way Brian mentioned may give better results.

yes, feeding the tv booster with the RF output of the transmitter .
I know AH101 and AH102, but here in Italy they are hard to find!

You could try using 5dB attenuator + ADL5601 + 2dB attenuator + BFG135 to get nearly 1Watt of RF at 600MHz.

These parts are cheap and can be bought from Farnell etc and are easy to design with. The attenuators are simple 0805 or 1206 package SMD resistors.

buy them off ebay mate :) they are available in their thousands for a few SS each, particularly from some of the chinese ebayers eg
WJ AH102 AH102A 350-3000mhz 14.5db gain rf amplifer ic (eBay item 300308957179 end time 10-Nov-10 19:42:18 AEDST) : Business Industrial

Dave