Antenna Question

[hadesflames]

I'm assuming there's no real difference between antennas from one antenna to another aside from one antenna perhaps being more powerful than another. Right?

Mostly curious because I saw a spec page on a wifi adapter indicate that the antenna is specifically a wifi 6E antenna which I thought was weird that it would even list this. So now I'm wondering if that's just marketing or if there's any actual difference technically between a wifi 6 vs a wifi 6E atenna. I know 6E adds the 6ghz radio but does that need to be supported in the antenna itself as well? And would there be any difference between a wifi 6E antenna vs a wifi 7 antenna then for example if that's the case?

 

[Tech9]

There is no "more powerful" antenna. Antennas have gain and frequency range. Wi-Fi 6 5GHz band antenna may have some design differences compared to Wi-Fi 6E/7 6GHz band antenna. Don't expect much high-tech engineering with consumer AIO routers though. Most use simple 1/2 wave length dipole with lots of non-functional "gaming plastic" around, omnidirectional with 2-3dBi gain, dollar a piece cost from a hard to pronounce supplier.

 

[hadesflames]

I meant more so on the client side. But either way basically a wifi 6e antenna and a wifi 7 antenna are the same thing, and wifi 5 might have some differences is what you're saying?

 

[Tech9]

Antennas are made for specific frequency range. What data they will transmit and receive doesn't matter. Cheaper mass production devices like most consumer products often have multi-band antennas. Not the best for any band, but good enough for what the device is going to be used for.

For this specific Wi-Fi adapter expect 2x multi-band antennas with different gain for different bands, but good enough. The rest is marketing.

 

[sfx2000]

Mostly curious because I saw a spec page on a wifi adapter indicate that the antenna is specifically a wifi 6E antenna which I thought was weird that it would even list this. So now I'm wondering if that's just marketing or if there's any actual difference technically between a wifi 6 vs a wifi 6E atenna. I know 6E adds the 6ghz radio but does that need to be supported in the antenna itself as well? And would there be any difference between a wifi 6E antenna vs a wifi 7 antenna then for example if that's the case?

The antennas are matched and tuned at the board level for the bands that the device supports - also note that the antennas work together as an array due to the MIMO support.