Wireless Signal Booster for Laptops

Continuing my older post about wifi range of laptop can be increasing, wireless signals are susceptible to a lot of losses of data. The topography of the place where you stay is also a deciding factor, when it comes to the wireless signal strength that you will be receiving. If a large number of trees or buildings come in between your laptop and the router you are connecting to, then your signal strength will be almost nil.

Besides everything, the wireless network cards, that come inbuilt, have very limited power and range. The answer then lies in using a wireless signal booster. A simple solution is getting a wireless card with a higher power or attaching an external USB antenna to the laptop.

There are various vendors who manufacture wireless signal boosters. These are simple devices and can simply be plugged into the USB port of your laptop. The taller the antenna of your wireless booster, the better the reception. The working of the wireless booster is pretty simple. It accepts strong signals from the router and amplifies them inside your network, thus increasing your signal strength to a great deal. For those who are interested, I am putting in a little more detailed working methodology of a wireless signal booster.



A wireless signal booster consists of two antennas - the transmitting antenna and the receiving antenna. The receiving antenna is connected to an intermediate amplifier. The other input to the intermediate amplifier is a radio signal source. The intermediate amplifier amplifies the difference between the two signals; the received signal and the radio signal, and passes it over to a low-noise amplifier. This is done to remove any unwanted signals. The low-noise amplifier is connected to the transmitter. The low-noise amplifier further amplifies the received signal and sends it to the wireless card.

The wireless signal antennas in your laptops are located internally. Generally, there are two parallel antennas located on the two sides of the LCD screen. The internal location of the wireless antennas causes bad reception of the wireless signals. So, the first problem that a wireless signal booster needs to solve, is to provide an external high gain antenna. This antenna needs to be directed to the access point.

If you don't want to spend money on buying a booster, you can simply buy a yagi antenna and integrate it to your laptop. But, before getting the antenna, you need to check the type of antenna connector that is present in your wireless card. When buying an antenna or a booster for your laptop, take care that it has a high decibel (db) range of reception.

Though, you can find out other ways for boosting up the wireless signal strength, changing your wireless network location to a position with a better access point, upgrading the router's firmware etc., all these methods are not always applicable to laptops. You may have to move over to different places with your laptop and it is not always possible for you to change the router's firmware everywhere.

The solutions that you can then rely on, in these cases, is to use a network adapter with a better power range, somewhere around 500 mw, that can be attached to your laptop through the USB port. You can also change the wireless card to one that has a strength to reach to a greater distance.

It is not always the inbuilt network card that carries the blame for your poor wireless signal reception. You may have the router placed quite near to your point of access and still may be receiving bad signals. In such cases, make it a point to put your laptop in the line of sight of the router.

The other simple, yet important factor that you need to take care of, when using a wireless connection, is that you are using a genuine broadband connection from an internet service provider. Take care that you have selected the right wireless network and you are not unknowingly stealing from someone else.

source : info