[Arm-netbook] ARM system with good wifi

luke.leighton luke.leighton at gmail.com
Mon Sep 30 21:44:53 BST 2013


On Fri, Sep 20, 2013 at 4:04 PM, Stefan Monnier
<monnier at iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:

> The lack of other answers makes me suspect that all the builtin wifi
> adapters on ARM systems just suck, IOW what I'm looking for
> doesn't exist.

 there are two factors at play here.

 1) the price-war on tablets is driving everything down.  if you're
putting in a high-quality $5 WIFI module you just made the entire
product uncompetitive because everyone else is using $2 modules.  when
the product BOM is only $30 the higher-quality WIFI module represents
a whopping 10% increase in the BOM.

 2) low-end portable products need lower-power WIFI modules otherwise
the battery has to be larger, and *again* that pushes up the price to
uncompetitive levels.  low-power WIFI modules tend to have
shit-for-brains range

the only other thing i can think of perhaps is for you to take some
pictures of the wifi module, identify it, and then hunt around to see
if there's a way for example to add an external antenna (or a better
external antenna if it already has one).  then make sure it's
installed in a place that's away from any metallic objects inside the
casework.

the only problem with increasing the effectiveness of the antenna is
that it can suck more power out of the module's R.F. transmitter (i
don't fully understand this but it's what i've heard so i'm repeating
it parrot-fashion).   so you'll just have to watch out for that, ok?

l.



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