* Most important part of wireless tends to get least visibility
I’m writing this newsletter ahead of Apple’s much-anticipated, mystery press conference scheduled for Friday, which will presumably reveal more about its iPhone 4 signal reception problems and solutions. So I don’t have any news on that just yet.
But as a warm-up, I’d like to reiterate some comments made by longtime wireless industry veteran and consultant Andy Seybold, from his “Real World Intelligence” e-newsletter earlier this month. In it, Seybold reminds us about the pivotal role antennas play in any wireless device or system.
Apple’s iPhone press conference: We’ve got questions
Enterprises evaluating wireless WAN and LAN systems tend more often than not to disregard antenna design. This is in part because many vendors don’t bring it up, implying that an antenna is an antenna is an antenna.
But the Apple debacle is swinging the spotlight back onto that important component of the wireless device.
Seybold points out that external antennas can pick up a signal across a broader range than those shielded within a casing, such as inside a cell phone or wireless access point. But with the demand for sleek, small, snazzy smartphones, manufacturers have been putting them inside the devices, making them easier to carry. It’s really quite a feat, given that these phones often must support multiple antennas, tuned to different frequencies in the WAN (worldwide phones) and often to WLAN frequencies, as well.
Apple tried a neat best-of-all-worlds design trick by putting antennas in a metal band around the outside of the phone to free up room inside for a bigger battery. But things in the physical world that absorb radio waves — such as the human body and, in this case, the thumb or hand — affect signal reception.
If you’re a “person of a certain age,” you likely have memories of walking by your AM or FM radio and having the music get worse (or better) depending on where you are standing. I have a retro radio with the thin-cable external antenna, which I have strung up and around the window in various odd configurations to get it work better.
Bottom line, says Seybold, “the antenna, its effectiveness and its location, is the weak link in any wireless or radio system.”
There are a lot of behind-the-scenes wireless engineers who deserve a lot of credit for what they’ve been able to design — and we shouldn’t take their work for granted. If buying for a business, a discussion and evaluation of antennas, particularly for enterprise systems, should be high on the list of evaluation components.
