importance of multiple antenna?

[smagro]

Hi,
Im building a secondary HTPC with an old Atom/Ion itx board I have. Unlike my main HTPC this one will be wireless.

It has a mPCIE slot (full height) so I will pick up a Intel 5100 or 5300 on ebay. I found some for €10 and €15 respectively.

However I will be going for a compact mITX case. Most of them have a single hold drilled for a sma antenna.

Obviously the 5100 and 5300 have two and three antenna points respectively. I can drill more points if necessary but it will look kind of crazy to have two or three antenna sticking out the back of a tiny ITX case...

The usage scenario would be primarily receive (transmit throughput not important).

So my questions are
1) Will the cards work okay with a single antenna only?
2) Will I lose a significant amount of performance by using only a single antenna?

My wifi router is not 450Mbps but for the sake of the discussion lets assume it is (I will upgrade to something like E4200 in the near future).

Thanks

 

[thiggins]

You must connect antennas to all terminals or you will run into the problem I describe here (scroll down near bottom of page).

 

[smagro]

You must connect antennas to all terminals or you will run into the problem I describe here (scroll down near bottom of page).

eek, that doesnt sound good. I was hoping I could just connect one antenna and it would function normally.

Anyway thanks for the info, it will certainly save me a lot of head-scratching if it occurs.

 

[sfx2000]

So my questions are
1) Will the cards work okay with a single antenna only?
2) Will I lose a significant amount of performance by using only a single antenna?

My wifi router is not 450Mbps but for the sake of the discussion lets assume it is (I will upgrade to something like E4200 in the near future).

Thanks

1) The RF sections of the card are expecting a load - the antenna is typically that load - your performance will definitely be impacted...
2) Yes, if the card wants two or three antennas

Have you considered maybe using a USB dongle or WiFi to ethernet bridge? See the Trendnet TEW-680MB review - damn fast...

 

[smagro]

1) The RF sections of the card are expecting a load - the antenna is typically that load - your performance will definitely be impacted...
2) Yes, if the card wants two or three antennas

Have you considered maybe using a USB dongle or WiFi to ethernet bridge? See the Trendnet TEW-680MB review - damn fast...

I have a couple of USB dongles lying around (TP-Link 150Mbps and 300Mbps) but external dongles wouldn't really suit the kind of build I have in mind (very small).

Ethernet bridge...again it doesnt really suit my build, it is a secondary HTPC for the bedroom so very minimalist and low budget. Total cost will be under €150.

Anyway I had already ordered an Intel 5300 card before the first reply so I will just have to see what I can do. I could grab a 5100 for a tenner but even that will require two antenna which is going to look OTT on a tiny ITX case. It will look more like a router than a HTPC ! Prior to this thread I didn't realise the importance of having an antenna on each connector..I figured it would just switch down to a two stream or one stream mode with no side-effects.

Thanks

 

[sfx2000]

Is it a plastic or metal case?

One thing you could do is salvage internal antenna elements from a router and mount them behind the faceplate, spacing them out a bit to get decent diversity gain - about 5 inches (4.92 specifically) to get you decent lambda at 2.4 GHz