More Gain with Less Pain Pinyon Technologies Wireless Networking Antenna Design

Pinyon Technologies, a Reno, Nevada company, provides antenna solutions that can increase gain by as much as three or four times, compared to a dipole antenna.  This offers the opportunity to significantly increase range, decrease battery power or trade off range against power requirements in Bluetooth, UWB, Zigbee, DECT, Wi-Fi, WiMAX or other wireless networking applications.  The dramatic improvement is based on a proprietary, patented, AirWire^TM shorted-slot technology.  No external antenna is required.  Instead, the antenna can be provided on the radio’s standard FR4 printed circuit board, a considerable cost savings. 

The Pinyon Technologies antenna design provides other advantages.  The signal from a standard dipole antenna is polarized vertical.  The signal from a Pinyon Technologies antenna design has significant energy in both horizontal and vertical polarizations, offering improved signal strength.  AirWire antennas are well suited for applications that require high gain in a noisy multipath environment. 

Pinyon Technologies has multiple antennas available, offering different tradeoffs between range and power, for wireless networking applications at standard operating frequencies from 1.7GHz to 6GHz.  In addition designs are available for GSM and 3G antennas at 1.85GHz and 2.7GHz.  Antenna designs can also be customize to meet customer requirements as the technology is scalable to multiple different frequencies to meet the needs of the applications. 

Semico Spin

It seems obvious.  The signal strength of a radio is determined by the antenna design as much as by the radios amplification stages, but we do overlook this fact.  Many design engineers, thinking about the circuit design, focus on the PA (Power Amplifier), trying to use a PA with the best combination of gain and efficiency.  This creates two potential problems:  one, better PAs are often expensive; two, the best PA available can not overcome a poor antenna design.  It’s like using a restrictive pipe as the outlet for a powerful pump.  Pinyon’s antenna design offers higher gain at a lower cost.  What’s not to like?