Eagle eyed folks over at Patently Apple who keep a tab on almost every patent that Apple has filed in the recent past are at it again. They have now unearthed an interesting Apple patent application submitted to the U.S. Patent & Trade Office, which deals with antennas and their integration in future Apple gadgets.

It looks like the brilliant engineers at Apple were already at work on a new type of antenna long before the Antennagate issue rocked Apple after the launch of iPhone 4 earlier in the year.

The original filing of this patent was made way back in June 2009 – exactly a year prior to the launch of the iPhone 4 and the subsequent Antennagate saga.

The patent application seems to point that the design for the antenna could be used for the Macbook and iPhone – at least initially. However, Apple foresees the design to trickle down to a wide variety of devices including miniature devices like wrist watches and wearable gadgets.

As for the design itself, Apple calls it the “Logo Antenna”. The antenna will be concealed beneath Apple’s logo. The idea behind concealing the antenna behind the logo is to get a stronger signal without intervening metal or other conductive housing walls interfering than what would be normally achieved by using “traditional” antennae that are mostly housed inside gadgets where it has to fend off the interference offered by the housing and walls.

Apart from this, there is also a space crunch as gadgets keep on getting smaller and thinner. By moving the position of the antenna from the insides, not only does Apple solve major reception issues, but also offers some more real estate for engineers to play with.

Patently Apple notes:

Apple’s solution involves logo antennas for electronic devices such as the MacBook and iPhone. The housing may contain conductive sidewalls. For example, the housing may be formed from a machined block of aluminum or other metals. The walls of the housing may be used to hold conductive components such as displays. Integrated circuits and other electronic components may be mounted within the housing.

It will be interesting to see if Apple ditches iPhone 4’s antenna design for the newly patented logo antenna design for the next generation iPhone. As always, let us know in the comments section below.

[via Patently Apple]