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I have internet dongle huawei e3131. It has external antenna connector. I made at home some type of parabolic antenna. Picture for illustrative purposes (without foil) :)

Picture for illustrative purposes

Basically it put foil inside my fruit dish and put my e3131 in center with usb extension cable.
When dongle was directly attached to laptop, it shows signal strength 1 bars of 4. When i put dongle in my 'super antenna', then it shows 4 bars of 4. I then looked at statistics of network. It was about -90dBi with dish. Today i searched ebay for antenna to my dongle. For almost all antennas in description was Max Input power(W): 60. (Example here on ebay) I know that usb cannot give that much power. What means that Max Input power? Does really theses antennas works?

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Keep in mind that an antenna is just a collection of one or more conductors arranged so as to couple a certain range of frequencies effectively to free space.

As such, the only real limitations on power handling is the current-carrying capability of the conductors, and the voltage-withstanding capabilities of the insulating materials used in the antenna. Even a modest antenna can handle 60W with no problem.

Of course, in a typical wireless network application, you're never going to get close to these power levels, but there's no reason (i.e., cost savings) for the manufacturer to make the antenna any less rugged.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ antenna can, but computer can provide that much power to antenna? Or even half of that power? \$\endgroup\$
    – Guntis
    Commented Feb 25, 2013 at 13:00
  • \$\begingroup\$ No, of course not, but there's no problem with operating the antenna at, say 100 mW (+20 dBm) or 1W (+30 dBm). \$\endgroup\$
    – Dave Tweed
    Commented Feb 25, 2013 at 13:08
  • \$\begingroup\$ then i need antenna with max power 5 watts. \$\endgroup\$
    – Guntis
    Commented Feb 25, 2013 at 13:55

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