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Yes, the wifi antennas are very specifically sized for the 802.11 frequency ranges. They also often have band pass filters built in to prevent transmissions outside of those bands, as required by FCC regulations and such. That said, if you are really interested in that kind of thing, and you are willing to switch to Linux, the wireless card drivers are very hackable.

Source: I forked the driver for my wireless card many years ago and still maintain it, tho these days it's mostly the upstream kernel driver plus a few hacks to get the most out of the hardware: https://github.com/FreedomBen/rtl8188ce-linux-driver



Damn, this is really cool. Great work!

Small question: how much does this affect power on the laptops you've used this on?


Thank you! I'm sorry I'm not totally sure what you are asking. Are you asking how much does it drain the laptop battery? To be honest I've never really tested that, but I'm curious now :-) If you are asking how much the driver affects the transmit power of the wireless card, it takes it from 20 dB up to 33 dB, and each 3 dB is a doubling of power, so it cranks it up by a significant amount.


Yes, I was curious about how much this affects battery drain. It seems like it would be a considerable amount.




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