antenna-theory.com

[CodingFiend]

Current cellphones have a very compromised antenna design because they are not only worried about radiation into the head, but they are boxed in by their obsession with thin small form factors. If you could make the antenna a retractable design, it could be way longer and work so much better. You could put the radiating section above the head and it would be at least one wavelength long. wouldn't a telescopic full dipole antenna work 10 times better?

[admin]

Meh

Increasing the size of your antenna makes it more directional, which isn't what you want

Ideal size of the antenna is a half wavelength

The antennas on cell phones reuse the chasis and ground plane for one half of hte dipole so that they have a lot of size to them

Antenna efficiency cannot be as low as you think because TRP/radiated power is set to a minimum threshold by the cellular carriers, and cellular radios do not have arbitrarily high output power, so the antennas stay remarkably efficient even though they are integrated....one reason you have to higher great antenna engineers

If you got the antenna away from the head yes you would do a little bit better, but not a factor of 10, maybe radiated power would increase by 3dB or a factor of 2

[scubasteve]

it depends what you mean by better?

It might increase the gain if you made it longer but then it would be more directional and you might lose signal when you rotate your phone isn't that right ?

I am very curious to know what would be 10 times better in a long retractable design!