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Understanding the characteristics of PCB antenna and FPC antenna
Internet of Things and intelligent hardware products need antenna to transmit data on the Internet. The smaller the space and the more frequency bands, the more complex the antenna design is. External antennas are generally standard products, suitable frequency band, without debugging, plug and play. For example, express cabinets and vending machines, magnetic antennas are commonly used, which can be sucked onto the iron shell. These antennas can't be placed inside the tin cabinet. Metal can shield the antenna signal, so they can only be placed outside. The advantage is easy to use and cheap, but the disadvantage is that it can not be used in small-sized products.
The antenna length is about 1/4 of the wavelength of electromagnetic wave, so the lower the signal frequency, the longer the antenna length.Therefore, a long pole antenna is needed for a FM radio of about 100 MHz, a walkie-talkie of about 400 MHz, and an external long pole antenna is also needed. The 433MHz wireless serial port commonly used in the Internet of Things is usually also equipped with an external antenna.
SL-Base Station Antenna Plate
Antennas that are made shorter, such as 1/8 or 1/16 wavelengths, can also be used, but the efficiency will decrease. Some devices will adopt "short antenna + LNA" mode, and can also achieve the reception effect of long antenna. However, short antennas need to increase the transmitting power to achieve the effect of long antennas. Therefore, the radio needs to transmit signals, which are long external antennas, while FM radio only receives no transmission, and has built-in receiving antennas. For example,2G(900MHz),4G(700-2600MHz), WIFI and Bluetooth (2.4GHz), GPS (1.5GHz), these commonly used Internet of Things communication methods can be used as built-in antennas. For small size products such as handsets, wearable design and smart home, external antennas are seldom used, and built-in antennas are commonly used.The product has high integration, beautiful appearance and slightly weaker performance than the external antenna.
The built-in antennas include ceramic antenna, PCB antenna, FPC/steel antenna and LDS antenna.
Ceramic antenna
Ceramic antenna, the most used in Internet of Things products, is the GPS antenna and Bluetooth antenna.
The advantages are: small space occupation and good performance.
The disadvantage is that it is difficult to achieve multi-band, so it is difficult to be applied in4Gproducts. The requirement of circuit board clearance is relatively high, and it is not suitable for the products with special compactness.
GPS, Bluetooth and GSM Ceramic Antenna
Slider Board of Deep Connection Circuit Communication Base Station
PCB antenna
As mentioned above, an antenna is a wire of a certain length. This line can also be drawn on the PCB board, which is the PCB antenna.
PCB antenna is widely used in Bluetooth module, WIFI module, ZIGBEE module and other single band module circuit board.
Advantages: There is almost no cost and no need to debug again after one adjustment.
Disadvantage: Only suitable for single band, such as Bluetooth, Wifi. The performance of PCB antennas in different batches will have some deviation.
Steel sheet and FPC are equivalent to pulling out antenna lines on PCB board and using other external metals to make antenna.
Usually used in low-end mobile phones and smart hardware products with complex frequency bands.
Advantages: Suitable for almost all small electronic products, can do more than 10 bands of complex antenna such as4G, good performance, low cost.
Disadvantage: It needs to be debugged separately according to each product.
Steel sheet antenna and FPC antenna
Write By WHWIRELESS
