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I've upgraded my laptop's Wireless Card to one that features 3 antenna ports (intel ultimate N 6300 minipcie).

Unfortunately my laptop only has two antenna connectors, which I've connected on the edges of the card, leaving the "middle antenna" vacant. The card seems to perform reasonably well nonetheless.

I'm wondering what the purpose of the middle antenna is, or perhaps the purpose of all 3 antennas - and which connector is best left out when one has only a limited number of antennas available.

cloneman
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1 Answers1

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The card can transmit on two antennas and receive on three.

MIMO (Multiple Input, Multiple Output), which utilises multiple radios to transmit and receive at the same time to maximize wireless networking performance.

These multiple radios transmit multiple streams of data called "spatial streams." The higher the number of spatial streams, the higher the throughput. Numerous streams of content can move over the same channel at the same time, multiplying the capacity of each channel.

Am pretty sure that it does not matter which one you do not have connected, it will also allow for redundancy due to a antenna failure. But i will have to let someone else expand on this part of the answer.

Jdsmith.It
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