LapTop Wireless Antenna

[ironman]

I have a Compaq Presario 1500 LapTop that has a Mini Pci slot that had a 56K Dial up modem in and I took that out and put in a BroadCom Wireless modem and I cut off the plug that was used for the RJ-11 connector for the phone line connection, I then soldered 2 wires on the Antenna Connectors of this Wireless Modem and attached them to the wires that go to the RJ-11 Jack that is for the Phone line.

OK, I then took a mounting cord for a telephone and stripped the outer covering of this cord and it left the 2 red and green wires, I then laced them around the outside of the LCD and thought that would be my antenna..

Well, the signal is still too weak trying to pick up my wireless router in the same room..

OK, my question is, being this LapTop did not come with an internal antenna, how can I adapt an antenna under this method?

Does I LapTop Antenna have some kind or Diode or intergrated within the antenna path?

If you know of a way to resolve this, email me at

Lronman@comcast.net

Reguards
Bruce

 

[frozenlead]

Well, an antenna is a bit more than two pieces of wire. Just linking two pieces of wire to a transceiver is an excellent way to get a poor signal. I'm assuming you tried to make a dipole antenna.

There's a small bit of simple math here (for the dipole, at least).

You'll need the frequency your router transmits at, which we'll make equal to f.
You can then calculate the wavelength of the transmitted wave by this equation:

w=(c/f)

whereas:
w = the wavelength of your radio wave, in meters
c = the speed of light (an electromagnetic wave, in a vacuum, which is constant at 2.998x10^8 meters/second)
f = the frequency of the wave, which your router can tell you (it is likely to be 2.4GHz)

Then, once you have the wavelength, you can calculate the proper length of each leg of the dipole antenna by dividing the wavelength by 4 (for a quarter-wavelength antenna, at least. You may divide it by any factor of 2 (half and quarters are most common), but your signal quality will differ each time - you'll have to balance size and quality).

For more information, head here:
http/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dipole_antenna

EDIT: and if you did that already and didn't post it, no insult to your intelligence!