Discussion Short Antenna Comparison with Benchmarks

[PLLovervoltage]

Summary

Antenna​	Default Asrock​	Super Short (20mm)​	Short (30mm)​
Geometric Mean​	213.8​	189.4​	198​
Percent Perf​	100​	88.6​	92.6​

Note: Derived from Transmit/Receive benchmarks



Detailed Result (Tested using iperf)

Signal Strength (%)

Antenna​	Default Asrock​	Super Short (20mm)​	Short (30mm)​
1(2.41GHz)​	88​	87​	86​
11(2.46GHz)​	88​	88​	88​
36(5.18GHz)​	87​	85​	87​
100(5.5Ghz)​	87​	86​	86​
161(5.80GHz)​	88​	88​	87​

Transmit (Mbit/s)

Antenna​	Default Asrock​	Super Short (20mm)​	Short (30mm)​
1(2.41GHz)​	53​	48​	58​
11(2.46GHz)​	70​	71​	80​
36(5.18GHz)​	437​	356​	360​
100(5.5Ghz)​	393​	392​	392​
161(5.80GHz)​	369​	270​	268​

Receive (Mbit/s)

Antenna​	Default Asrock​	Super Short (20mm)​	Short (30mm)​
1(2.41GHz)​	84​	86​	85​
11(2.46GHz)​	140​	113​	133​
36(5.18GHz)​	491​	361​	356​
100(5.5Ghz)​	417​	404​	402​
161(5.80GHz)​	353​	327​	328​

Conclusion

Note: Make sure to compare performance between antennas and not channels. Performance across channels are affected by environment.



Saw the short antenna occasionally but I came across the super short antenna that looked really good on a website in korea. It was marketed for 2.4Ghz so I was worried about its performance for 5Ghz. So I performed various benchmarks utilizing iperf to compare performance. Since its marketed for 2.4Ghz I thought channel 161 would be hit hardest since its farthest from the optimal wavelength fraction. Channel 36 was hit the hardest and I went through the benchmark 2 more times but same results which is converse to what I expected from antennas advertised for 2.4ghz. I only use 5Ghz but I included 2.4Ghz cause I wanted to compare bluetooth performance. But performance impact was less than I thought. Geometric mean hit of 11.4% for the super short antenna and 7.4% for the short antenna.

Because I think people will ask links to antennas. They're for Korea so idk if it'll help tho.
Super short (20mm)
Short (30mm)

 

[1337harcha]

Cool stuff, one more step that would allow me to clear up the mess of wires. BTW the link for 30mm is a bit broken.
I tried searching aliexpress for similar stuff but only found one 30mm antenna with the wrong connector. Does anybody know where I can get this sent to Europe?

 

[Phuncz]

Amazing work, thank you !

 

[Lbibass]

This was really well done! Personally, I noticed much worse connection speeds with a shorter antenna, but that was mainly because of the location of my router. If I rotate my case 90º, so it is on its front panel, the performance loss was negligible. I guess that's the advantage of having those long, wired antenna: you can move them so that they aren't interfered with by whatever is nearby.