antenna-theory.com

[peshalnayak]

Hi,
I have designed a monopole patch dual band antenna which has the operating frequency of 2.4 GHz and 5.2 GHz. The antenna is very small - about 4cm*3cm*0.8mm (yes its mm not cm) in dimension.
However, the VNA on which I was planning to test my antenna has been damaged and returned for repairs. Is there any way I can test my antenna and demonstrate that it works for both/ any one of the above frequencies.
This is urgent as I have to give a project demonstration in a week. Please help me.

[wolberine]

Sorry to hear about the damage.

I'm guessing you're unable to access other expensive expensive RF equipment.

The experiment I'm thinking of involves hacking a Wifi device that hopefully has 50ohm output (and your antenna has 50 ohm input) and a known antenna characteristic (dipole or monopole).

You'd set up a sender with fixed transmission power (the lower the better), fixed modulation scheme, etc. The receiver would have a fixed antenna orientation.

The receiver would additionally have a Wifi sniffing tool (some sort of way to gauge how many packets are received)

Then you'd characterize the sender's antenna by finding the different distances with almost no packet loss and a lot of packet loss (no more packets received).

Then, you'd swap the transmitter's antenna with your own antenna and repeat the experiment, do some math, and figure out your antenna's performance in relation to the fixed monopole or dipole.

Repeat for the 2nd frequency.

Also note, I've never done this exact experiment before, but a lot of times this similar set up is how you characterize receivers (lower the Tx power, send packets, lower Tx power again, send packets) and you can calculate receiver sensitivity. Likewise, if we fix receiver sensitivity we can characterize another parameter in the signal chain.