The problem is common to this type of audio system. I would bet if you looked at the noise spectrum you would see 60 Hz plus many of the harmonic frequencies (120 Hz, 180 Hz, 240 Hz, etc.). The fact that it is more than just 60 Hz, or 50 Hz in some countries, is an indicator that it is not just simple ground loops.
I would also bet that your laptop power supply has only a 2-prong AC plug-- lacking the third ground plug.
In this type of power supply, the output is electrically isolated from the AC input. But it is not perfectly isolated. There is a small amount of current that flows between the isolation barrier. This is called the "leakage current". It is not a lot of current, but it doesn't have to be.
Some laptop users report getting shocked or having a tingling sensation in the legs when using the laptop while wearing shorts! The reason for this is that leakage current is going through the screws in the bottom of the laptop and into their legs. It sounds dangerous, but the amount of current is well below the safety limit. It is more startling than anything else. If you are wearing pants then you're insulated.
Laptop chargers that have the 3rd prong on the AC plug do not have this problem because that third plug is connecting the laptop chassis shield to ground-- forcing that leakage current to go to ground instead of into your leg. Of course, there is no leakage if you are running off of batteries.
In your case, the leakage current is not just going into your leg, but into your radio receiver. The solution to this is to properly ground your laptop.
You will have to experiment with this a little bit to find the best solution. Getting a power supply with a 3-prong AC plug is the best, but not always possible. The next option is to find something on your laptop that you can ground. Make an adapter from that 3rd prong to "something". That something could be the signal-ground on the output cable of your power supply. It could be a screw on the laptop. Or a shield on an unused laptop connector. Or the ground/shield on your audio cable.
Make that 3rd prong adapter, but leave the other end bare for the moment. Then start poking it around to see if or where you can connect it and have the noise go away. Once you have found a place or two, then finish up the adapter so it is easy to use.
Two warnings when doing this: Make sure that whatever you are grounding is actually ground! On the power supply output, make sure you ground the negative or gnd conductor. And when poking around, understand that you might actually have to poke a little hard. Both the bare wire and whatever you are poking will likely have a thin layer of non-conductive stuff on it, and you need to apply enough force to poke through it. Rubbing sometimes helps too. The non-conductive layer is sometimes paint on screws, or an oxide (rust) on the metals.
Oops, here is a 3rd warning: Be super careful when making that 3rd prong adapter. You're messing with potentially lethal voltages and we don't want you to die. Build the adapter in a way that there is no possibility of it failing and shorting out against either one of the other two conductors in the AC plug.
Give it a try and report back what you found!
The layout you showed looks like what's called copper-backed coplanar waveguide (CBCPW). That means the ground return for the waveguide is not just in the coplanar grounds (the ground fills on the same layer as the signal traces) but also in the plane layer immediately "below" the signal layer. This structure is fairly esoteric, in the sense that I've only seen it used in digital systems when data rates exceed 20 Gb/s.
I found what looks like a reasonable discussion on the differences between CBCPW and microstrip in a Microwave Journal article by Rogers Corp engineers.
This article shows that the CBCPW has lower loss than microstrip at frequencies where radiation loss becomes important in the microstrip, roughly from 25 GHz and up, which explains why CBCPW is not widely used at lower frequencies.
Addressing your question, the article points out some special requirements for grounding vias in CBCPW structures:
For proper grounding, CBCPW circuits employ vias to connect the top-layer coplanar ground planes and the bottom-layer ground plane. The placement of these vias can be critical for achieving the desired impedance and loss characteristics, as well as for suppressing parasitic wave modes.
This basically means that without frequent stitching vias between the coplanar ground and the backing ground, power could be transferred to undesired propagation modes, which would cause either excess insertion loss or strong dispersion in the transmission line characteristics.
Best Answer
Both your provided links sound like they were written by someone with very little understanding of how antennas work. I would ignore them entirely.
A ground plane is a necessary part of a monopole antenna, often called a "vertical" since that's how they are usually mounted. These antennas are essentially half a dipole, with the other half being the electrical "mirror" of the antenna on the other side of the ground plane.
The only requirement for the ground plane is that it conducts. The more conductive it is, the better. The bigger it is, the better. Professional AM radio broadcast antennas use lengths of copper wires buried just under the ground, radiating out from the base of the antenna, to make the Earth more like an ideal ground plane. I'm sure if iron worked better, they'd use iron, as it's much cheaper than copper.
If I had to guess, the reason CB operators think ferrous metals make better ground planes are two-fold:
If you don't actually have an antenna, then none of this applies. The lesson to be learned is this:
Don't use references written by CB operators as a source for learning about electrical engineering of any sort.