Nothing is better to improve wifi connectivity than a good antenna!!
My friend AB needs a way to optimize his 2 streams wifi card the Linksys AE1000 to his powerful MSM460, the internal antennas kind of suck! So we decide to mod the card with our wifi junk yard, and yes we do have a real wifi junk yard.
This card is dualband so yes we put an ok gain dualband antenna!
I did the solderering while AB did the mechanical design to hold the antenna in place!
Here is the pictures of our mod.
Since the AE1000 is a a 802.11n 2 streams, there are two antennas printed on the PCB.
So first remove the test RF connector, be careful not not to destroy the PCB trace.
Remove also the SMD cap as shown on the picture, cut the trace of the PCB antenna and solder the coax/pigtail.
When unsoldering, apply generously flux.
Do both side as there are two antennas.
Final result!
Linksys AE1000 mod
Solid 2 streams 300mpbs
vswr1 
March 3, 2013 at 2:31 PM |
This is awesome. I want to do this to my ae1000 but where do you have to make the solder connections for the antennas?
March 3, 2013 at 3:03 PM |
Hi John,
Thanks for the enthusiast response!
I’m modding another ae1000 so I’ll update my blog with more pictures as to where to solder the coax/pigtail.
Cheers!
March 3, 2013 at 3:08 PM
Great can’t wait. I have a basic pc out in the garage that has pretty poor signal strength because of the distance from the router and I would love to try to use some leftover wifi parts to boost it before shelling out more money on another adapter
March 3, 2013 at 5:24 PM |
I updated with “missing” pictures of the mod.
Does the mod work? yes as my router is in the basement and the signal has to go thru 2 floors, and I got rock solid 802.11n MCS15 rate, my friend AB also got good result as he used an AE1000 without the mod and seeing the result after AE1000 mod.
The antenna is the most forgotten component but good antenna is king!
March 5, 2013 at 7:18 PM |
Thanks for the updated pictures. I modified mine and went from 2 signal bars to 4 in 5ghz band and full reception in 2.4ghz. I only use it at the 5 ghz band and nearly doubled its throughput. Might do a bit better if I get some better antennas rather than using the crappy ones I had access to.
November 9, 2018 at 6:07 PM |
salut je voudrais souder un fil pour ma clé wifi usb D-LINK DWA-123 pour que j’augmente le signal
klk1 peut m’aider a faire ce petit projet et le matériels requis
merci d’avance
November 15, 2018 at 3:51 PM |
Salut Wiki Lipse,
Je t’aiderai volontier mais tu ne vis pas sur le même continent que moi.
Si tu connais des amis qui étudient en génie électrique, essaie de trouver un qui est habile avec un fer à souder et qui connaît un peu le RF. Pour le matériel, le plus difficile est de trouver le bout de cable RF, dans les vieux router wifi tu peux en trouver.
Ce mod est un peu difficile, sinon tu peux acheter sur le net une carte avec en connecteur SMA avec une antenne externe, ce n’est pas trop chère
Z273
March 26, 2019 at 2:26 PM |
Hi, i see that work and is amazing, (sorry for my Inglish) but the two “anttenas” what remove…. is possible connect a pigtail male??? i see this connection between male and female
the picture:
March 26, 2019 at 8:43 PM |
Hello Gaston,
Thank you for visiting my blog 😎 and antenna.
Sorry but you cannot connect the pigtail from your picture, because it is a ufl connector type and the connector you see on the wifi card is another type not compatible with ufl. The female connector you see on the card is used for manufacturing test, they insert a probe into to measure RF signal before reaching internal antenna.
You need to remove/unsolder the connector on the wifi card and solder your pigtail to the pads as shown on my pictures.
If you have an electrical engineer or tech friend you can ask them to do the mod, most of ”real” electrical engineer knows how to solder 😎
If you are near Montreal, Canada I would do it for you in exchange for good expresso 😎
Good luck my friend.
April 6, 2019 at 8:29 AM |
I could get the 2 pigtails, remove the two original antennas but when I tried to add the pigtal fail and the contacts did not fit, when I used the tin the AE1000 ran out of signal, damaged the board, I was left with only 1 light and very low signal, It is rare that I light a single light, can I fix it? any advice?
If you wan up the picture of the board
April 6, 2019 at 8:33 AM |
Sorry, maybe if you want help me, is better for email?
April 7, 2019 at 9:40 PM |
Hi, sure please post the picture of your board here, maybe there is hope to make a proper fix, let me see what you did already, try to do a big zoom of the area where you tried to solder the pigtails to the board.
April 8, 2019 at 2:22 AM |
I think…. this is broken… but, the pic
[IMG]http://i67.tinypic.com/2gydp4h.jpg[/IMG]
the points red are tin (in the line orange cut antenna original)
i know is worst this job
April 10, 2019 at 7:36 PM |
I look at your picture, it looks like the “patient” has died from your surgery 8–) I zoom your picture to see if any pcb trace left, but all gone.
But hey at least you did try to make the mod, it is not an easy one, nice try.
There is this wifi card I used from Amazon, it is not too expensive and work very good, it costs about $20CA, the card come with external antenna, the card is 802.11ac so you will benefit from the good receive sensitivity, I highly recommend this dongle: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B01JG1GP7K/ref=oh_aui_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
however if you have more money, you can buy this one:
it is around $40CA, I use this card with aircrack-ng in Kali.
Both cards are good in either Windows or Linux.
Sorry I cannot give you more advice to repair your usb dongle.
Anyway, have fun.
April 11, 2019 at 12:55 PM |
Thanks, i have compiled in Kali another usb wifi tp-link 722n V3, this have antenna, but i wanted another device usb with antenna (my AE1000 without use for mi Kali-Raspberry), again thanks for your advice.
regards