Suntsu PCB Antennas

An antenna printed directly on the printed circuit board material (PCB) is a PCB antenna. Our PCB antenna is a separate component printed onto FR4 or rigid-flex PCB that connects with a cable to the main circuit board. This approach avoids many of the significant disadvantages of printing an antenna directly as a trace PCB antenna on the circuit board. It allows you to modify the circuit board without changing the antenna if you upgrade your design.

The development of small-scale printed circuit boards and wireless communication increases the innovative uses for PCB antennas. Some of the applications include:

• Communication – devices, and people communicate using radio waves with receiving and transmitting antenna instead of electric cable.
• IoT – more of our household appliances have acquired PCB antenna so they can make your life a little easier in surprising and entertaining ways.
• Medical – medical science adapts to take advantage of new technology, and current innovations are coming from wireless communication for treatment, diagnoses, and monitoring.
• Automotive – driverless cars are coming, but there are more modest applications like collision warning and assisted parking.
• Robots – for fun activities or practical, control your vacuum cleaner or lawnmower through WiFi, and where you use WiFi, you have antennas.

The main advantages include:

• Versatile – you can design your ideal antenna and integrate it with your application.
• Small scale and low profile – you can mount on any flat surface.
• Optimal design – gives a high gain with excellent, reliable performance,

The downsides are:

• A PCB antenna needs to be installed considering EMI related products like wireless modules, battery, metals.
• These antennas need a stable environment for optimum operation and are susceptible to noise. For example, you need an unreasonably large antenna.

We offer a wide range of Frequency bands, including but not limited to,

• WiFi/ZigBee/Bluetooth band (2.4-2.5GHz)
• WiFi Dual-band (2.4-2.5GHz and 4.9-5.9GHz)
• ISM bands (433MHz, 863-870MHz & 902-928MHz)
• 3G/GSM/LTE full band (699-960MHz, 1710-2170MHz, 2300-2400MHz and 2490-2690MHz).

How an electromagnetic wave works depends on its frequency. There is a broad spectrum of electromagnetic waves with various potential uses. The most useful for communication purposes fall in the radio and microwave frequencies. The radio frequency band stretches from 30Hz to 300GHz, and our PCB antenna work in the radio frequency range. Our standard components include Bluetooth antenna PCB and WiFi antenna PCB.

The International Telecommunications Union regulates the use of radio bands for different applications. You pick the frequency of the PCB antenna to match your application.

A GPS PCB antenna works in the GPS frequency range of 1.5 GHz, and that would be a custom order from us, or you can opt for a GPS patch antenna. A 13.56MHz PCB antenna uses the RFID and NFC tag frequencies, and we can create a custom PCB antenna for this application, but we offer a broad range of NFC antennas.

A custom PCB antenna can significantly lower your manufacturing costs because you create an antenna to match your application design rather than compromising on the other design and cost elements to use a non-ideal antenna.

The critical elements of PCB antenna design are:

• Antenna length – alters the operation frequency.
• Feed – how you power the antenna makes a difference to the radiation pattern.
• Groundplane – shape and size affect performance and efficiency.
• Type – simple loop or more complex shape and layers.
• Operating environment inside the enclosure.
• Materials – dielectric of PCB board and the RF properties of other components.

It is not helpful to design a PCB antenna in isolation because it must work with the enclosure and other components. Our professional team has plenty of experience designing PCB antennas for various applications and can recommend designs and alternatives for your application.