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morrownr / USB-WiFi

USB WiFi Adapter Information for Linux
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Using only 1 antenna on a 2 antennas USB-WiFi adapter #330

Open plafond75 opened 11 months ago

plafond75 commented 11 months ago

Hi :-) I was wondering if there was any possibility to use only 1 antenna on a 2 antennas USB-WiFi adapter. Specifically, the Alfa AWUS06AXML. I know that using both antennas allows the MIMO feature, and beamforming as well, but is it possible to deactivate them ? (Maybe by configuring the driver, but I'm not really sure how to) For context, I need to use 2 cards (so 4 RF connectors) but can only use 2 antennas, and adding a duplexer, or any adaptation RF chain is, for now, not possible.

I already had tried to use only 1 antenna on an Alfa AWUS 036ACH (with a 50 ohm terminator on the unused RP-SMA connector) but it ended up "killing" the LNAs and the card never recovered from that test. Don't know if it's a problem with the card I had, or if it's a "normal" behavior. For this test, I hadn't change anything in the driver.

Any help or feedback would be much appreciated !

morrownr commented 11 months ago

Hi @plafond75

Interesting question. I certainly do not have the answer but a lot of smart stop by here over time.