Antennas are black magic to many electronicists and to hear that antennas may detune in the presence of metal is a further argument to leave all that “RF wizardry” to the specialists. And you can, safely.

Antenova, winner of an Elektra 2017 award, can now supply a 2.4-GHz antenna which is designed to operate without de-tuning on metal surfaces or where the product housing is mainly metal.  The antennas from the ‘Reflector’ range consist of two layers, one electrically isolated from the other, so as to provide RF shielding to the second layer. As a result the antenna can be placed on any kind of material and it will radiate effectively in the direction pointing away from the base material.

As an example of the new series, The Zenon SR4W030 2.4-GHz antenna for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, ZigBee and ISM, measures 23 mm x 16 mm x 1.6 mm. It is manufactured from rigid FR4 laminate and has a 1.13-mm cable and IPEX MHF connector. The cable can be specified in two standard lengths, 100 mm or 150 mm. The antenna can be fixed in position with a peel-back self-adhesive strip, and can either be inserted into a new design or it can be retro-fitted into an existing design. No tuning or matching is required.

I wish the makers of my Lenovo U410 PC had known this back in 2012 … owing to daft assembling of the Atheros RF module inside, this otherwise excellent notebook has very poor Wi-Fi performance. I will sit close to the router then.