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Forum Discussion
Nighthawk XR700: Antenna Upgrades and Replacements
Hello, friends! So I am a professional engineering scientist, but I do electronics repairs in my free time to pick up cash here and there, and sometimes even pick up sweet equipment people just give ...
domiluci scratch the idea the four external antenna have anything related to the 60 GHz network. Open the enclosure band you will figure out. 60 GHz is somewhere in the mm range, around 5 mm. That's also the reason the reach is limited, and only free air can be used - it's short range technology. The 60 GHz antenna is in the middle to the R9000/XR700 front, covers about 160 degrees only, and a range of about three meters which must be free from any obstacles. When the cat or dogs are walking the way, the link is going down until the direct line of sight is free again.
Common use was and still is with wireless docking stations for notebooks btw.
When I have it right, the four external antenna are made from plain coax cable with one end connected to the PCB, and the other end (probabily scratched from some shielding). Something like this could at least serve as a replacement. The other cabling is just for some LED in the antenna "holder".
For the records, the tiny PCB there is the 60 GHz phased array antenna in the front of the R9000/XR700. The copper is mostly for heat dissipation - because this is a "hot" technology:
Inside of the antenna "blocks" there is the RF-module, powered and linked over the RF cables from all internal radio modules. In the upper end, there is a single antenna connctor linking to the 2.4/5GHz antenna array on the top end of the antenna PCB.
Show us what's "broken" on the antenna you have at hand...