Since 802.11b cards are pretty much a commodity these days, I've gotten to the point where it's not much of a priority to review them. But when Asante sent me the announcement about their new 802.11b PC card, the "Xwing Antenna" part caught my eye.

Until the XWing, the only innovation in 802.11b adapter card antenna design has been 3Com's "XJack" design. Although the version on 3Com's Bluetooth PC card pops up a little antenna into a vertical position, the version on its Wi-Fi cards keeps the antenna in a horizontal plane and just allows the user to retract it so that it doesn't stick out of the side of a notebook computer. Since most Access Points and wireless routers have their antennas oriented vertically, client antennas should also be oriented the same way for best performance.

Asante's design is simple, but very effective in getting two antennas into a vertical position. The result is the best possible antenna design with diversity and vertically polarized antennas. You can get the gist of how they do it by checking out Figure 1.

Figure 1: Internal exploded view
(click on the image for a full-sized view)

This picture, which I got from the Internal Photos document that is part of the

• 1 – Introduction, Details and Feat...
  

  1. 1 – Introduction, Details and Features
  2. 2 – Wireless Performance
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