[Tinyos-devel] Effectiveness of 'piece of wire' antenna used Mica2...

[Jean-Pierre Poulin]

Hello,
 
I’m an electronic engineer considering to use a ‘piece of wire’ antenna coupled with a Chipcon/TI CC2500 2.4Ghz radio (similar to CC1000 used in Mica2)
 
The page at http://www.tinyos.net/hardware/antenna-mica2.html states that a “quarter wave whip antenna of solid copper wire” has been used with length “75/frequency(MHz) = length in meters.”, which would result in 75/2450Mhz ~= 30.6mm for 2.4Ghz.
 
Has anyone in the community tested the range of this antenna versus other available antennas commonly used with these radios?  (like PCB ‘Inverted F’, ‘Meandered F’, ‘Folded Dipole’ or even chip antennas?)
 
The reason I am asking is that it is difficult to fit in our product the PCB space for the antenna to resonate away from any metal, and a simple / inexpensive 'piece of wire' antenna coming out of product could be just the ticket if range & is reasonably close to the fully-qualified reference designs available from TI / Chipcon and manufacturability is good.
 
Thank you for any assistance you can provide on this difficult antenna topic!
 
   Regards,
   Jean-Pierre Poulin
 
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