Soldering together two antennas in wireless USB adaptor?

[scottes]

Hi All,

I'm a freshman engineering student at Virginia Tech so I haven't learned too much engineering yet per-say. Just a quick question:

I'm modding a wireless USB adapter for my computer to have a directional antenna rather than the small (and not too powerful) omni-directional antenna that came installed with it. I've already read up online how to do this but then I got to thinking, how great would it be to have both antenna installed if possible. So my question to you all is: Is it possible to solder two connections (specifically antenna connections) to "one input"?

Thanks,
Scott


HOKIE FOR LIFEEEE

[ash]

Welcome to Crazy Engineers, scottes!

I plan to do something similar.. but just hook up a more powerful spider omni directional antenna.

Regarding the use of two different antennas at the same time, it is possible. 802.11n devices have multiple antennas. However, keep in mind that each antenna requires its own matching input impedences, so using different types of antennas on a single transciever simultaneously may cause unpredictable results and performance fluctuations. If you do plan to implement your directional antenna, its best to disable the omni directional one by removing the tracks connecting to it.

However, if your using the "Cantenna" method, you don't really need to solder anything. You'll still be able to keep your original embedded antenna