US 12,278,659 B2
Switchable antenna system
Smit Kapila, Karnataka (IN); Jayprakash Thakur, Karnataka (IN); and Santosh Gangal, Karnataka (IN)
Assigned to Intel Corporation, Santa Clara, CA (US)
Filed by Intel Corporation, Santa Clara, CA (US)
Filed on Jun. 16, 2021, as Appl. No. 17/348,803.
Prior Publication US 2022/0407557 A1, Dec. 22, 2022
Int. Cl. H04B 1/44 (2006.01); H04B 1/401 (2015.01)
CPC H04B 1/401 (2013.01) 18 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A wireless computing device comprising:
an antenna selector configured to switch a radio frequency (RF) transmission path between an internal antenna and an external antenna;
a Universal Serial Bus (USB) connector configured to connect to the external antenna, wherein the USB connector is configurable to support signaling on a USB interface according to a USB standard, wherein the USB connector comprises two pins that the USB standard defines as ground pins; and
a detector configured to detect if the external antenna is connected to the USB connector, wherein the antenna selector is configured to switch the RF transmission path to the external antenna if the detector detects that the external antenna is connected to the USB connector, wherein if the detector detects that the external antenna is connected to the USB connector, the RF transmission path includes the two ground pins, wherein one of the two ground pins is configured to connect to a positive antenna port of the external antenna and another of the two ground pins is configured to connect to a negative antenna port of the external antenna.