Description

Internal antennas are often patch antennas or ceramic patches mounted directly on or inside the device housing or PCB. They either use pins / solder pads or tiny connectors (e.g. U.FL / IPEX) with very short leads. Without an external wire means less flexibility to place in ideal orientation, so placement in device and ground plane design become more important. Typically, such antennas are passive (no LNA) or minimal LNA. If there’s no external cable, you lose some possibility of adjusting or moving the antenna. Gain will be lower compared to antennas with cables + external mount, unless the design is optimized well.