Wireless USB adapter high gain antena

[Kain]

I got myself a wireless G USB adapter. Reason why I wanted USB one is because it can be used pretty much on any PC - notebook or desktop vs. PCI or PCMCIA cards which are restricted to either desktop or notebook. Anyways, as expected USB adapters sacrifice something because of their compact design - high gain antena which actually is major pain in my neck. When only surfing the net actually it's ok, but once I become say a file transfer within the local area the transfer speed just falls....it's not even funny how much it falls... sometimes to even 5mbps which is just rediculus. Then, I opened the adapter and touched the device while transfering - there we go crusing back to high speed. If I remove my hand it goes back to snail crusing speeds... It is obviously lacking the benefit of having a better antena (in fact i can hardly see anything that can be called antena in this thing). I wonder if there is a way to make small if possible PCB high gain antena, or at least higher gain than what it currently has? I'm willing to construct new case for this too - the original looks like crap ;D We are talking about frequencies in the range of 2GHz by the way.

 

[Kain]

Oh, I forgot to post the pictures of the adapter. It seems this small rounded component is the antena it is having right now. The wireless controller is obviously the ZyDAS ZD1211 on which I can't find any detailed documentation such as suggested schematics, but this is not that important for now.

View attachment 36686

 

[audioguru2]

Hi Kain,
I don't know much about microwave tranceivers but the small round "SW1" on the left side of your card looks like a coaxial connector for an external antenna.

My son has a G wireless card in his laptop. Its antenna isn't visible but it has pretty good range. It can steal the bandwidth of wireless links pretty far away from inside a car.

 

[Kain]

Alrighty, I will try to attach an antena to SW1 somehow and hope this will do it. On touch actually it does make a huge difference, I mean when I touch SW1. Thanks anyways.