Adding an External Wi-Fi Antenna to Your PSP
Date: Apr 11, 2005
The Sony PlayStation Portable is a wonderfully designed handheld entertainment center. With it you can play games, listen to music, watch movies, view images, and even surf the internet. To help the PSP perform all these functions, it boasts a beautiful LCD screen and supports the Memory Stick Duo (Sony proprietary), the Universal Media Disk (another Sony proprietary) drive, and an embedded wireless network card.
Each of these features is important to the PSP's success, but in this article we are going to focus our attention on one particular aspect of the PSP: the wireless network card. In particular, we are going to examine the possibilities of increasing the PSP's wireless signal strength to make it more adaptable to situations where you might need a few extra dBs to get that quality connection.
Before moving on, please note that this modification will void your warranty. In addition, there is no guarantee that you will have a working PSP when you get the device back together. And if that isn't enough, your new antenna must be properly installed or your 'upgrade' will fail to perform as you might hope. One final warning; this mod is not meant to be pretty. It works, but you will have to deal with the presence of an external pigtail/antenna hanging off your PSP. Thankfully, you can unscrew the antenna and just hide the smaller and more flexible pigtail.
Why Add an External Antenna?
I purchased my first PSP soon after its release in the US. While it was fun to play NFS and watch Spiderman-2, I was aching to see what was on the inside of the device and subsequently took it apart. As I worked my way down through the device, I noticed a small piece of plastic stuck under the right side controller with a connecting wire that trailed over the main circuit board and disappeared under the left side of the device. As it turned out, this was the antenna for the embedded wireless network card (Figure 1).
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Figure 1: PSP Antenna as originally designed.
For such a compact device, I was not really surprised to see this design. After a few more minutes of disassembling the PSP, I was able to learn that this antenna connected to the network card via a U.FL connector, which is typical for embedded wireless network cards. Figure 2 illustrates what this connector looks like, and Figure 3 provides you with an image of the original antenna in its full glory.
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Figure 2: U.FL Connector on PSP network card.
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Figure 3: Original Wi-Fi antenna removed from PSP.
Once I had noted the existence of the U.FL connector, and had removed the original antenna, I wondered what would happen if I attached a larger antenna with a little bit more oomph to it. Since the tight space limitations left me with no room to grow on the inside, I decided to add on an external antenna capable of increasing the signal, but still keep the PSP mostly portable and user friendly. The rest of this article shows what I did and the results of my upgrade.
Installation
I am not going to explain how to take apart the PSP. If you want some help with this, please read the detailed article available here at Informit.com for a step by step guide on disassembling the device. Also note that it is not necessary to take the PSP apart to accomplish this. In theory, you could cut-drill-melt or otherwise gain access to the internal connector by working through the plastic case from the backside. However, given the tight space and the chance for debris, it would probably be safer to take the PSP apart.
Once you have the PSP completely apart (and I do mean completely), you will be able to see the antenna and its U.FL connector on the WNIC. It takes a bit of force to remove the antenna from the network card, but trust me, it will come off. Be sure to remove it using a perpendicular force from the network card. This is a standard male/female socket with a small pin that you do not want to bend or break.
With the antenna off, you next have to make a hole in the PSP case for the new pigtail to pass through. This can be accomplished many different ways. I actually melted the case using a soldering iron and slowly worked the hot plastic to create a small hole with smooth sides. You could alternately use a drill and poke a series of holes through the side of the PSP.
Figure 4 illustrates the placement of the opening. It needs to be at this location for several reasons. First, it is important to note the PSP case actually will keep the U.FL connector in place and firmly seated. Once the device is put back together, a small knob seats up against the U.FL connector to hold it firmly in place. If you damage or inadvertently remove this knob, the pigtail will easily come disconnected from the PSP. Second, most upgrade dongles will be made of a wire that is significantly more firm than the original antenna. As a result, it is hard to bend the wire. And finally, it is important to note how the pigtail will affect game play. By slipping it out the side of the case, the pigtail should slip nicely between your fingers and not affect the controller.
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Figure 4: Hole placement
What antenna to use?
When considering what type of external antenna would go well with the PSP, I immediately thought of a small omni directional 5dBi. This type of antenna would be small enough to keep the PSP portable, but still give be enough extra signal strength to make the modification worthwhile. In addition, if I purchased an antenna/pigtail combination, I could always replace the 5dBi omni directional antenna with a 35dBi dish antenna should the need arise. Not that I ever expect to play my PSP over a 30+ mile wifi link, but it is always best to leave room for growth!
Purchasing the antenna was rather easy. I started with Ebay and eventually landed at this link. From this site, I was able to purchase the *RV24-5RD-UFL* antenna for $20.00. Drew from alamedawireless.org also sent me a Froogle link should you only need a pigtail. Regardless of which choice, just make sure your antenna/pigtail has a female U.FL connector on the end! Otherwise, you will not be able to connect it to the WNIC.
The next step is a bit tricky. In order to connect the pigtail to the WNIC, you will have to partially install the network card and then insert the pigtail wire through the hole while carefully aligning the U.FL connectors with each other. Any other method failed for me because the slightest twist or motion of the WNIC caused the connector to separate.
Once the U.FL connector is aligned, push the WNIC firmly into the PSP. This will caused the connectors to snap together. Then immediately tighten the WNIC guard into place. With this done, you can reassemble the PSP and get ready for the testing stage of this modification. Figure 5 provides a shot of what the PSP looks like from the back with the antenna connected!
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Figure 5: Successful modification
The Results
The true trial to any modification is to see if it actually helps or hinders a devices operation. So, we went to work and put the antenna to the test. In order to do this, we used AirMagnet's wireless monitoring program, which includes numerous tools that allow a user to detect and monitor network signal strength vs. noise, utilization, etc. For our purposes, we wanted to see how well the newly modified PSP compared to a factory standard PSP.
The following are two screen shots of AirMagnet showing the results of the upgrade. On the left side you can see that both devices are connected to an access point by the name of Linksys (default settings for this test). The modified PSP is listed as Sony:53:A4:4F and the original is listed as Sony:53:5E:38. On the upper right side you can see the signal strength, as indicated by the yellow line. Basically, the higher the yellow line on the graph, the stronger the signal.
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Figure 6: Original PSP
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Figure 7: Modified PSP
These two screen shots clearly illustrate the stronger strength of the modified PSP. As you can see, the upgrade caused the yellow strength line to jump up to the next level. For those who understand the Signal/Noise ration, the new antenna added about 12 dB. The following lists the signal, noise, and SNR values for your enjoyment.
|
PSP |
Signal |
Noise |
SNR |
|
Original |
-68 dBm |
-95 dBm |
27 dB |
|
Modified |
-56 dBm |
-95 dBm |
39 dB |
Of note, look closely at the original PSP graph. For some reason the signal value continues to degrade the longer the device is operating. In addition, the spikes in the chart are a bit disturbing because they represent a complete loss of signal. Interestingly, there is nothing wrong with the upgraded model (once I properly seated the U.FL connector).
Summary
While this modification is minor on the scale of hardware hacks, it still yields a fairly impressive gain. For only $20 and a little bit of effort you to can modify your own PSP to get these results. However, for all that it may help your signal this mod does severely degrade the aesthetics of your beautifully designed PSP. Fortunately, if you find the external pigtail more of an annoyance than upgrade, you can easily remove it and reinstall the original antenna. Thanks for reading!