The Atheros AR9271 is used on a vast amount of laptop/notebook computers today, the advantage of such a device is the external antenna that allow much greater distance when communicating compared to that of a PCB antenna made to fit in a laptop. The AR9271 is also sold on Ebay and other sites under many different generic names, and they are very cheap to purchase sometime even delivered for under $10. Many time these devices will have drivers included on a CDROM, but due to the fact that CDROM drives are no longer being put in Laptop devices the driver can be hard to install. So below you can download the driver using your existing wireless connection.
The standard antenna is 3 dBi