WWAN antenna

[emconuk]

Hello.

I recently ordered a WWAN antenna set from Lenovo. It comes in two parts with an antenna for the LCD and one for under the keyboard bezel.

The Vodafone WWAN card (MC8755) only has one antenna connector.

Can I just use the keyboard bezel antenna and not have the LCD antenna. Has anyone else fitted on of these themselves ?

I have already installed the SIM card reader.

thanks, emconuk

[Harryc]

What was the part number that you ordered from Lenovo and what is the machine type/model of your Thinkpad? Is it the T60P in your sig?

[emconuk]

I ordered both 91P7029 and 91P6989. They were both identical when they arrived.
Yes it is for the T60p in my signature.

The SIM card was 41W1353.

Machine type: 2007-FBG

[Zender]

I have originally installed the one running to LCD bezel for MC8755 (one-antenna), just for the fun of it (I remember hearing "He buys so expensive notebook and then takes it all apart." ).

Though I'm not sure I'd want to do it again, the front bezel is partially glued to the LCD, which means it will never be the same, it's tricky to put it back so that all the antenna cables have some freedom all their way and so. If I were you, I'd try to use the one in keyboard bezel and see if I have problems picking up signal. The one in LCD bezel definitely is placed better, but still I think the difference will be marginal. You can always decide to add the other one later.

I'm glad I did it, because now I have MC8780 which makes use of both I recommend using the Vodafone version antenna, it might (but only might) be better tuned to frequencies the USA does not use (2100MHz?).

[emconuk]

thanks Zender.

I have made one attempt to install the LCD based antenna. Eventually I gave up for two reasons. The cable routing was a nightmare and the cable started to get kinked a little too much. Secondly, I have a wonderful IPS flexview display and I started to feel I was pushing my luck having the whole LCD assembly in bits. I just couldn't take the risk of damaging the display.

I also found the antenna spoilt the profile of my Thinkpad a little.

I think I will try the keyboard bezel antenna.

anyone else had any experiences with only using keyboard bezel WWAN antenna ?

[dr_st]

I'm in the opposite situation. Have a T60 15" Flexview with a useless WWAN antenna bulge on the side (the WWAN card itself is 100% useless where I live anyway).

Cosmetically I would prefer that the bulge is gone and replaced with a WWAN blank cover.

However, it seems a relatively cumbersome a tricky procedure, involving the dissasembly and reassembly of the LCD bezel. IBM would not do it under warranty, of course, because it's not broken and does not constitute a replacement, but rather a modification, which is not free.

I even asked them to do it when they had to replace my LCD (hair), but they wanted to charge me $200, for a part that costs $5 (maybe), and labor that they had to perform anyway to replace the LCD. Such are the ways of life.

[emconuk]

I think the opposite situation is easier to handle. I found the hardest part of installing the antenna was the routing of the cable. Whatever way I tried to fit it the cable always got snagged or the LCD would not stay flush when reassembled.

I think removing the antenna and putting in a blanking plate would not be so hard.

*BUT* these Flexview screens are easily the best screens on any laptops I've ever seen. Even these new LCD ones don't come close IMHO.
Take extreme care whatever you decide to do.

[Zender]

Just a note - I guess you do know about LenovoServiceTraining.com?

[emconuk]

thanks very much Zender, that site is fantastic !
I may very well try that again now. I was trying to route the antenna cable before the panel was put back in - doh !
Do you happen to know what the red tool is that the engineer is using ? did you use such a thing ?
It looks like some kind of kitchen utensil

[Zender]

Thank Lenovo for that one

I didn't use such thing, mostly used just fingers (have thin), sometimes helped myself with bigger screwdriver (e.g. for front cover separation) or anything around that didn't have sharp edges (for moving the antenna cables).

[dhung]

Hi emconuk, recently I just done my WWAN upgrade on my T60 (2007-M5M), took me a while (and a lot of patient) to put the LCD WWAN antenna into place.

When you take the plastic bezel off the LCD, just becareful with it, don't lift it with brute force, as there are some double sided tape secure the LCD along the side withe the plastic bezel.

My personal advise is to use the LCD WWAN antenna for better reception performance, as the one under the keyboard bezel is on the lower flat surface, it might not pick-up as much signal as LCD WWAN antenna.

[Peak2Peak]

Can I just use the keyboard bezel antenna and not have the LCD antenna. Has anyone else fitted on of these themselves ?

My personal advise is to use the LCD WWAN antenna for better reception performance, as the one under the keyboard bezel is on the lower flat surface, it might not pick-up as much signal as LCD WWAN antenna

When I had an MC8775 (Firmware version: H1.1.8.3) installed, I initially installed the keyboard bezel-antenna and found the signal strength to be low - one/two bars displayed within the Generic 3g Watcher across three mobile networks. Then Installed to LCD-antenna and found the signal strength alot better - three/four bars. However the data flow seemed relatively the same!

The FRU ordered & installed: 91P6989 WWAN Antenna 15.0" Kit has the following three individual FRU part numbers - 41W5125 Main Antenna – 39T9647 Aux Antenna & 41W4945? Flat Antenna? - The whole kit came with a sticker marked as 39T9648 on the re-sealable bag.

I found the whole antenna installation pretty straight forward - but was very careful stripping down the LCD bezel - The double-sided adhesive tape is not mentioned in the HMM! and as "Zender" mentioned earlier in this post "it will never be the same".

[enneract]

I could never figure out where the main chassis (not lcd bezel) antenna actually GOES. I ended up taking off the screw-hole bit and just taping it inside.

[emconuk]

Good news !
WWAN antenna is now installed in the LCD.
I may try and sort the keyboard bezel antenna out as well soon. The cable routing seemed a little tight for that one.
I am going to try and apply some new double sided tape to the LCD bezel although mine has gone back quite nicely.

Now I just need to find an MC8780.... ebay here I come.

thanks for all your help everyone. Much appreciated.

regards, emconuk

[Zender]

Glad to hear

My experience with MC8780 in T60 isn't that great though. I haven't yet figured out why, but the card draws ~3W of power even with radio turned off - the only way to remove the power draw is to disable it in hardware manager (WinXP). This has also happened to me with MC8755 (Lenovo-branded, approved in original T60 BIOS, works without taping pin 20), but only when I used drivers ver. 2.2.0.0 or newer. With MC8780, it happens even with 2.1.6.0.

Also the GPS reception is _very_ poor - though I'll try to tackle this by swapping main/aux, or by using one of the antennas which were in the USB enclosure (took my MC8780 from 880U), so it might get better.

@Peak2Peak: How is your GPS reception?

[Peak2Peak]

@Peak2Peak: How is your GPS reception?

Like your self Zender - reception is very poor and most of the time non-existant in my immediate area - even on a clear day. Although, I have managed to get "good" reception on nearby higher planes with between one to three bars on a very clear crisp COLD winter's morning! - The whole process generally take's over 2-3 minutes, although it does seem longer!

On the 3G side of things - The MC8780 card is definately better than the MC8775 - Very fast and sensitive across "3", T-Mobile & Vodafone mobile networks with a strong HSDPA signal of 4/5 bars (-86dBm/-65dBm) - with "3"/T-Mobile supporting a lower rate HSUPA!

Now I just need to find an MC8780.... ebay here I come.

UK eBay vendor: 3G-FEVER LTD sells alot of 3G items and the MC8780

[perfecblue]

My mc8780 GPS reception is okay I guess. On a bus I can get locked on within 20 seconds, but with the best accuracy to about 15 meters only (measured using Garmin nRoute). So for actual navigation, it's still a bit troublesome when you're passing the turn and it still thinks that you're just approaching it. But it's an added bonus, so I'm not gonna complain.

For the HSDPA reception, I agree with Peak2Peak, it's definitely better than mc8775. I'm getting the maximum at around 350KByte/s (2.8Mbit/sec) for downloads at some areas in Taipei. Plus with the extra antenna, I get reception on areas I used to have zero reception using mc8775. Although I'm not sure if the AUX antenna's actually being utilized with Access Connection since I modified it according to Zender's instructions to make AC think my mc8780 is mc8775.

[Zender]

But you have an X300, perfecblue, and the antennas there were made with GPS in mind [even though supported by Lenovo only in CDMA networks, the antenna array is the same for all X300].

The usage of second antenna does not depend on AC, it only talks to the card to connect/disconnect. The modification was needed for AC to think it knows the card and thus can control it directly.

[perfecblue]

Thanks for the clarification, Zender. I forgot to take into account that the antennas in x300 were indeed routed with GPS in mind. Great input everybody!

[Zender]

More on T60 and GPS.

MC8780 only uses MAIN for GPS, which is, in T60, tuned in a way that's unusable for this purpose.

However, if you connect the keyboard-bezel antenna as MAIN, the GPS works much better, I'd say about, or almost, as well as when I had the card still in the USB enclosure.

The bad side... UMTS 2100MHz reception is poor. Even a little worse than the single-antenna MC8755 (which used the proper MAIN) I had before. However if you use it in well-covered areas, it might not bother you. It might be because Lenovo never offered any UMTS card with receive diversity, so the AUX actually might not be tuned to 2100MHz at all.

I'm gonna try finding someone who knows enough about antennas to tell me whether one could "modify" the display-bezel antenna so that it can receive GPS better. Or maybe the other way around... find better antenna to put in the keyboard bezel. Somewhen, when I have time.

If only they were still making 14" SXGA+, so I could just move on to a newer machine.

Also noticed interesting thing, which only bothers me as I'm curious where in the BIOS that happens. Powering the machine on with MC8755 (Lenovo, approved, a few seconds are enough) makes it "remember" there was a good card, and if I hibernate the machine, swap it for MC8780, and the power up again, it will work without pin 20 taped and hardware wireless switch will work. And will survive sleep, hibernate, even with taking the battery out during hibernated-off, even reboot(!). The only thing that breaks it is power off.

Information! The Ericsson UMTS card Lenovo puts to new Thinkpads can be bought for less than $100 - in the UK, or even here in the Czech Republic. From reputable online shops. I wonder whether Ercisson gives the card to Lenovo for free or something, the price is almost ridiculous, taking into account it's FRU and they used to want a kidney or two for it. And I thought 880U for $100 was quite a deal...

[Peak2Peak]

Once again, nice work zender - Confirmed, swapping the MAIN & AUX antenna's drastically improves the GPS signal capture by at least 80% or more - claiming 5+ satellites, while the 3G/HSDPA signal was severly attenuated even in my strong 3G/HSDPA area!

I wonder if replacing the MAIN WWAN dedicated antenna with the 3rd WLAN antenna will be a form of compromise between a relatively goodish GPS signal capture & 3G/HSDPA signal capture, although CLEARLY it has NOT been designed for this prupose!

EDIT:
Have tried connecting the WLAN MAIN antenna to the MC8780 MAIN antenna input, getting no GPS signal and extremely poor 3G/HSDPA signal.

[Zender]

Too bad for now. I'll see if I can think up something in the future.

Peak2Peak: One a little off topic question - can you please check the power draw of your machine (in Power Manager / Battery Information / Wattage, need to be running off battery), whether it changes when you disable the AirCard 880U/MC8780 device (the main one, under USB Controllers, after disabling it all serial ports, modem and the network interface should disappear)?

It's worth ~3W in my machine, which is quite a lot (an hour of 9 cell battery with moderate use?). Whether the card's radio is turned off, or idling in the network, makes almost no difference in power consumption.

[Peak2Peak]

Zender: Here are some results I have recorded: (Batt = 6c / Cycle count = 10 )

System @ Idle - MC8780 Radio OFF - 3g Watcher not running - Voltage 11.25v Current 1.86A (Power 20.93W)
System @ Idle - MC8780 Radio ON - 3g Watcher running - Voltage 11.34v Current 1.89A (Power 21.43W)
System @ Idle - MC8780 Radio ON - 3g Watcher running - Connected to mobile network - No data flow - Voltage 11.19v Current 2.09A (Power 23.39W)
System @ Idle - MC8780 Radio ON - 3g Watcher running - Connected to mobile network - Data flow (downloading) - Voltage 11.19v Current 2.25A (Power 25.18W)
System @ Idle - MC8780 Disabled in Device Manager - Voltage 11.65v Current 1.83A (Power 21.32W)

Batt temp remained fairly constant between 36°C & 38°C (as did the system temp varying by only 2°C throughout)

Hope this helps

[Zender]

Thank you. If you allow, I'd have a few more short questions. Wanted to ask for the OS, but eventually on third reading found XPP in your sig, so I assume that's Windows XP. Which service pack, and which driver version (device manager, properties of the main MC8780 device, driver tab)? And is your MC8780 from 880U, or was it designated as MC8780?

Disabled in device manager, radio off: 1.28A @ 12.15V
Enabled in device manager, radio off: 1.54A @ 12.11V

[perfecblue]

Here's my findings on this subject, using Peak2Peak's format:

Windows XP SP3
X300 with MC8780
Driver Version: 2.1.6.0
System @ Idle - MC8780 Radio OFF - 3g Watcher not running - Voltage 11.23v Current 0.98A 10.67w
System @ Idle - MC8780 Radio ON - 3g Watcher running - Not Connected - Voltage 11.21v Current 1.03A 11.23w
System @ Idle - MC8780 Radio ON - 3g Watcher running - Connected to mobile network - No data flow - Voltage 11.19v Current 1.11A 11.35w
System @ Idle - MC8780 Radio ON - 3g Watcher running - Connected to mobile network - Data flow (downloading) - Voltage 11.21v Current 1.14A 12.54w
System @ Idle - MC8780 Disabled in Device Manager(USB/Modem/Network Adaptor) - Voltage 11.18v Current 1.00A 10.78w

X300 with MC8780
Driver Version: 2.2.0.0
System @ Idle - MC8780 Radio OFF - 3g Watcher not running - Voltage 10.93v Current 1.09A 11.24w
System @ Idle - MC8780 Radio ON - 3g Watcher running - Not Connected - Voltage 10.93v Current 1.05A 11.13w
System @ Idle - MC8780 Radio ON - 3g Watcher running - Connected to mobile network - No data flow - Voltage 10.88v Current 1.05A 11.38w
System @ Idle - MC8780 Radio ON - 3g Watcher running - Connected to mobile network - Data flow (downloading) - Voltage 10.86v Current 1.22A 13.26w
System @ Idle - MC8780 Disabled in Device Manager(USB/Modem/Network Adaptor) - Voltage 10.94v Current 0.86A 9.51w

x300 WITHOUT mc8780 (physically taken out)
System @ Idle - Voltage 10.87v Current 0.82A 9.07w

[Peak2Peak]

Zender: OS is Win-XP Pro SP2 & using Sierra Wireless Driver 2.2.3.0 (Aug 2008) - MC8780 pulled from a Telstra Turbo-7 Series (NextG) AirCard AC880U.

perfecblue: Thank you also for sharing your findings - appreciated

[Zender]

Thank you very much for all the information, Peak2Peak and perfecblue. I have that problem in WinXP SP2, using MC8780 taken from Telstra-branded AirCard 880U. Basically the same config... seems the time to pay the M$ devil has come, will have to try fresh XP install.

[Zender]

Hmmh. The issue is probably deeper, not concerning the WWAN card. It also happens with the internal bluetooth device. Enabling one of them will increase the power draw by ~3W. Enabling both yields 3W only once, so if I have Bluetooth enabled, or any other USB2 device connected, the WWAN card makes no difference.
Fresh WinXP SP3 install, only loaded basic drivers to see what I need... issue also there.

14" T60, screen dimmed to the lowest level, battery optimized profile, all radios off, I can get ~11W power draw. Enabling BT, or WWAN, or connecting my ExpressCard memory card reader (which is USB2 device), or any combination, takes the power draw 3W higher, without actually using those devices.

There seems to be a bug in USB driver implementation, which Microsoft has acknowledged, but fixed only part of it in a hotfix. The USB driver prevents processor from entering low-power C3/C4 states. Intel has some neat utility to check that, though it's only available to OEMs under NDA, so I can't find it anywhere, however it's easily confirmed by something CoreDuo and later chipsets are notorious for - buzzing/chirping sounds when these battery-saving states are being used. The sounds stop immediatelly when I enable one of the devices in device manager, and return after disabling it.

For some information on the solved part, see perhaps here.

[Zender]

Just a few more things I've learned. All tests with brightness to lowest level, wifi & bt off.

MC8780 from 880U
- radio on, pinging every 1s: 16W
- radio on, connected, zero transfers: 15.5W
- radio off, enabled in device manager: 15W
- disabled in device manager: 12.5W
- also disabled Intel USB device, to which the disabled AirCard is connected: 10.5W
- not in the machine: 10.5W

Now that's quite a difference... that's 25-33% battery life just because of having that thing in computer.

Ericsson F3507g (now sold by Lenovo for new ThinkPads)
- radio on, pinging every 1s: 17W
- radio on, connected, zero transfers for a few seconds: 11W
- enabled in device manager, radio off: 10.5W
- not in the machine: 10.5W

A little better, the driver seems to try mitigating the bad power management, but when it has to transfer, it simply has no other choice than keep CPU from entering C3/C4 states (again can be heard).

Bah. Will try Windows7 when time allows.