When choosing antennas, choose a reputable manufacturer, and avoid low cost antennas, or antennas which do not have a full list of specifications. If the antenna is very small (smaller than ½ a wavelength), then you should be skeptical of it’s performance.
Ideally the antenna datasheet should include radiation patterns so that you can verify it’s uniformity. If the radiation pattern isn’t shown the manufacturer may simply indicate the peak antenna gain, and that may not be useful in a real world deployment. The VSWR should ideally be less than 2:1. The saying “you get what you pay for” is particularly true for antennas.
Doodle Labs offers antennas which are optimized for use with Doodle Labs radios for various frequency bands. These antennas are included in the radio Evaluation kit and available for volume purchase. Please visit the accessories section of our website for full datasheets.
Due to the large variety of the antenna types, here we list a few antenna companies that our customers have reported good performance from.
· L-Com
· Larsen
[1] Doodle Labs Technical Library, https://doodlelabs.com/technologies/tech-library/technical-library-application-notes/