Practical Antenna Designs

The cost of 2.4GHz antennas has fallen dramatically since the introduction of 802.11b. Innovative designs use simpler parts and fewer materials to achieve impressive gain with relatively little machining. Unfortunately, availability of good antennas is still limited in many areas of the world, and importing them can be prohibitively expensive. While actually designing an antenna can be a complex and error-prone process, constructing antennas from locally available components is very straightforward, and can be a lot of fun. We present four practical antenna designs that can be built for very little money.

• Usb Dongle as Dish Feed
• Collinear Omni Antenna
• Cantenna
• Cantenna as Dish Feed