Andrew McNeil Tears Down a "12dBi" Panel Wi-Fi Antenna, Finds a Device Outperformed by a Rusty Nail
Despite the presence of a "Windows Vista" sticker as a warning sign, McNeil's impulse purchase proved ill-advised — comedy value aside.
Antenna designer and radio enthusiast Andrew McNeil has torn down an off-the-shelf "12dBi" panel antenna for Wi-Fi devices and found it sorely lacking — to the point where it is literally proven to be outperformed by a rusty nail.
When dealing with radio, the actual transceiver is only part of the equation: Peak performance can only be obtained by using the correct antenna, and exactly what a "correct" antenna is depends on the job at hand. For some tasks, a directional antenna is required; for others, omnidirectional. An antenna tuned for 2.4GHz Wi-Fi will work poorly for the amateur radio bands, and vice-versa.
A commercial panel antenna, advertised as boosting the signal available from Wi-Fi access points, routers, and dongles with an SMA connector, should be expected to be tuned for that very task - but McNeil's latest tear-down proves to be anything but.
"Picked this up last year when on holiday," McNeil writes of the device, which externally looks perfectly professional. "It turned out to be a bit lacking in performance — maybe that’s why it has a Windows Vista sticker on it!"
In his analysis, McNeil tears the outer shell apart and discovers a PCB with traces which are in no way tuned for 2.4GHz radio reception — as proven through analysis on a vector network analyser (VNA). In fact, when connected to a Wi-Fi dongle the antenna was completely unable to connect to any nearby access points — something that can't be said of McNeil's quickly home-brewed comparative device, a literal rusty nail.
The video is now available on McNeil's YouTube channel.
Freelance journalist, technical author, hacker, tinkerer, erstwhile sysadmin. For hire: freelance@halfacree.co.uk.