Apple’s keen on eliminating antenna woes in its products, even ones you may not even realize had antennas in the first place.

A new patent win for the Cupertino giant illustrates a method for integrating a cellular antenna into MacBook and iMac keyboards, specifically by placing antennas under some keyboard keys.

According to Patently Apple, this is Apple’s fourth cellular-based MacBook related patent over the past year and the second to deal with disguising the cellular antenna itself. Could we be seeing a 3G or 4G-capable MacBook in the future?

The design and positioning of an antenna in a device is an important issue Apple is fully aware of. Last summer, it was discovered that the iPhone 4’s reception significantly dropped when a user would touch one of its antenna bands. And in the past, MacBook Pro owners have had difficulties getting Bluetooth accessories, like the Magic Mouse, to play nice due to the Bluetooth antenna positioning in the notebook. Recently, a 2007 MacBook Pro prototype with a Mag-safe-style rabbit-ear 3G antenna was racking up big bucks on eBay before the auction was pulled.

In the patent, the antenna is hidden underneath a few keyboard keys in order to improve its reception and transmission efficiencies. When the key isn’t pressed by a user, the antenna’s resonating element would be about as far from the conductive metal housing as possible. Thus, ideally, the antenna would be positioned under a key that’s not used very often, like a print screen key (which the patent singles out despite the fact that Apple keyboards typically don’t even have a print screen key). According to the diagrams, individual antennas would be placed under multiple keys and the device would use real-time information to decide which antenna is the best one to use, for instance if one has a stronger signal than the others.

The patent doesn’t specify exactly what kind of antenna would be placed on the keyboard. It could be WiFi or Bluetooth, or it could even be used for cellular communication or for data services (3G or 4G reception). What type of wireless signal the antenna would receive or transmit would just depend on the configuration of the antenna.

So it could be that in iMac keyboards, the antennas would improve reception with Bluetooth peripherals, while maybe in the MacBook keyboard, it would be used for WiFi or cellular services. Then you wouldn’t even need to use your iPhone as a hotspot when you’re on the road.

Image: Patently Apple