Buffalo Forums
Products => Wireless => : chaolong August 10, 2013, 10:22:59 AM
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hello!
just like the title says i want to know how many antennas are in the wzr-600dhp i haven't been able to find a clear answer on the internet i know there's 3 in the wzr-300hp is the same in the wzr-600dhp?
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You have to understand MIMO arrangement before asking such a question because its not as simple as just seeing physical antennas and making a count of what you see. the wzr-600dhp is a 2x2 MIMO arrangement, so is the wzr-300hp. The 300hp may have 3 antennas, but only 2 of them really do anything, thus the reason there is only 2 of the fold out antennas on the unit, and the 600dhp is the same way - other than the fact that it has dual radios, a 2x2 mimo unit, so it'll only have 2 antennas per radio that will actually do anything, even if the 2.4Ghz radio has 3 antennas - only 2 of them will actually do anything. So for that unit - it has 4 antennas - 2 for each radio.
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thank you buddee for answering but I'm a bit confused now, you said in the end it has 4 antennas is it 4 physical antennas or 2 antennas shared between two radio? if so does that affect the performance compared to the 300hp which has only one radio?and what is the use of the 3rd antenna in the 300hp? i read somewhere that the 300hp has an amplifier for all 3 of his antennas why Buffalo cared to put an 3rd antenna inside and an amplifier for it if it was going to be useful?
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It has 2 (active) antennas per radio, the 2 fold out external ones are connected to the 2.4Ghz radio, the 5Ghz radio has 2 internal PCB board style antennas.
As far as why buffalo, or any other manufacturer arranges antennas the way they do, that would be something for you to ask them, i'm not a spokesperson on how and why they do what they do, but as i said earlier, you need to understand how MIMO arrangement works first, then you would better understand.
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thank you very much for your help it's much clearer now , I see that you are very active here I was looking around and found this thread (http://forums.buffalotech.com/index.php?topic=17685.0) where drmemory said that the 3rd antenna in the wzr-hp-300nh was a PIFI antenna I tried google but couldn't find what it is, I only found results for PIFA antennas which are used in mobile phones and they are significant enough so i assumed PIFI means PIFA-Wifi or something like that, this is just an assumption please correct me if i am wrong, if that is the case then I assume the 2 antennas for the 5Ghz radio are also PIFI, I also looked up MIMO and found that it basically means that you can combine multiple antennas for sending and receiving but you can't have multiple users or multiple radios inputting and outputting from that setup in other words it can't be shared between 2 or more users or radios i think the antennas who offer that feature are called Multi-user MIMO.
now if i understood you well the wzr-600dhp has 2 internal and 2 external antennas this was all I wanted to know but I did learn quite a few things.
thank you again budde for your help and please correct me if i am wrong about anything, everything i said here is based on a few google searches and a lot of assumptions which is not very reliable.
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i don't see the middle antenna being a PIFA based antenna. The middle antenna is a PCB etched style antenna, not PIFA, atleast it is when i take apart my own routers, and this is with either the 300 or the 600 series.
With PIFA - there would be some kind of antenna in the case that the middle antenna connector would be hooked to, if you look at internal board pics you'll not see such, only a PCB etching that ends of onto the board, no wire from the etching to connect to any kind of antenna. If it is infact PIFA, it would have to be from the board itself, which i wouldn't see a need to bother, an etched style antenna into a board will give hardly any gain, and even with the worst PIFAs you'll get atleast 1.5~2dBi gain - and this is with a physical PIFA antenna. With no physical PIFA - i wouldn't see no more than .2 dBi gain - so like i said, why bother..
The middle antenna is the least of your concerns though, as i said, it really doesn't work. But why it doesn't work is a bit more technical. It functions as a Rx antenna only, but your 2 end antennas have both Tx/Rx streams, thus fitting a 2x2 MIMO, the one in the middle could only be used if you had a 3x3 MIMO adapter because you couldn't get the 3rd stream with a 2x2 adapter, and here another issue, the router itself is only a 2x2 unit, so hardware limitation wise, it couldn't use the 3rd stream anyhow even if it wanted to - hardware wasn't designed for it. And the manufacturers probably know this, thus why the middle antenna is a PCB etched style with no use...
And for the record, its not just buffalo units that are arranged like this, i have an asus RT-N16 that is exactly the same, except those guys even went out on a limb and even tossed in an actual physical external antenna that does (guess what) absolutely nothing, and this was even tested within the dd-wrt forum and proven, changing the middle antenna on it did nothing, changing the left and right ones gave great gain in the overall signal.