2 antennas in WL500g

[zone]

hi There,

Is it possible to connect 2 antennas in diferent places on the wl500?
I saw that it has 2 connectors internally, i want to put one in my roof top and keep the other inside the house.
the purpose is to connect to a wireless community network near my house and keep my netwok for my computers at home, can i do this in hybrid mode?
Thx in advance.

Regards

[bramfm]

hi There,

Is it possible to connect 2 antennas in diferent places on the wl500?
I saw that it has 2 connectors internally, i want to put one in my roof top and keep the other inside the house.
the purpose is to connect to a wireless community network near my house and keep my netwok for my computers at home, can i do this in hybrid mode?
Thx in advance.

Regards

In fact the WL500g does have two antennas, one external and one internal antenna:


With some soldering skills you can make two external antennas:
You have to desolder Capacitor C147 (top of PCB) to disconnect on board second reversed F antenna. Use same capacitor to solder it on spare place C4. Measure the resistance of Resistor R56 (probably 50ohms ) and use same value for spare R55. Solder a MCX connector on J1.

Your idea is nice to have an external antenna on the roof for the community and another in house antenna for your local connection, but it will not work. You will get a lot of disconnects, simply because of the somewhat crippled antenna diversity scheme used by broadcom. That is the reason why I installed an second Accesspoint just for my local needs.

[Technik]

The internal antenna is quite sufficient for a house coverage. Please note you will loose warranty if you open the case!
The wireless network must support WDS if you wish to use Hybrid mode. It's not clear what exactly you need but I am afraid you would need another wireless interface if your home network is wireless as well.

[WlanMan]

Hmm, what do you mean with crippled ??
Do you know how this is all connekted ? I read, Diversity is usualy a Powered Antenna and a unpowered recieve-only pcb antenna, but like i see they seem both powered and connekted together by some sort of hf-splitter or switch ?
Can the Asus be tould to Switch one of them off, some cards can that ...

Greets

[zone]

so if i add an extra AP with a antenna and connect it to a lan port it will do the same that i want to do with the antenna on the roof?
what about replacing the mini-pci? (i not worried about warranty)

Regards

[bramfm]

Hmm, what do you mean with crippled ??
Do you know how this is all connekted ? I read, Diversity is usualy a Powered Antenna and a unpowered recieve-only pcb antenna, but like i see they seem both powered and connekted together by some sort of hf-splitter or switch ?
Can the Asus be tould to Switch one of them off, some cards can that ...

Greets

No antenna diversity is not (primarily) one receive antenna and one transmit antenna. With antenna diversity both Rx signals are compaired and the one with the best signal to noise ratio will be used. The next Tx frame will follow the last Rx antenna. And here you have your problem with two antennas on two different places (and this is what I mean with crippled). The PCB has an antenna switch witch is controlled by software.
Via the wl command you can swtich between antennas manually:

wl antdiv x   => select Rx antenna, 0 = antenna 0, 1 = antenna 1, 3 = auto
wl txant x => select Tx antenna, 0 = antenna 0, 1 = antenna 1, 3 =follow Rx ant

[bramfm]

so if i add an extra AP with a antenna and connect it to a lan port it will do the same that i want to do with the antenna on the roof?
what about replacing the mini-pci? (i not worried about warranty)

Regards

Replacing the PCB does not solve the problem of antenna diversity of two antennas on two different locations. In fact a complete seperate independent Wlan transceiver will solve the problem. Since you do not have any slots to insert an extra wifi card in the wl500g (and propably the wl500g firmware does not support it) , you must have an extra external AP. A WRT54G (WDS compatible with the Wl500g) only cost you around 67 euros, whereas a minipci costs allmost the same. Maybe a USB wifi dongle is an option, as long you can compile the driver for the MIPS platform.

[WlanMan]

Jo

Bramfm:
Thx 4 the info.

Zone:
Most USB Wlan cards dont support HostAP mode, at least i dont know any.
And for the WRT, you can geht the WAP54g which is allmost the same but without the 4port switch so still a little more cheaper than the WRT one .