directional antennas

3 Articles

Pushing Bluetooth Out To 12 Kilometers

October 24, 2026 by 25 Comments

Bluetooth is a short-range protocol that’s great for peripherals and finding your keys, but it’s limited range is mainly a product of how it’s usually implemented. A recent video from [nktbuilds] demonstrates this by extending its range out to 12 kilometers, or around 7.5 miles.

The secret is twofold: one is the antenna, a parabolic unit that captures far more than the dinky dipole in your phone. The other is a very sensitive receiver with a much lower noise floor. What you won’t see here is any extra power than you get stock out of one of those generic coin-sized Bluetooth tracker tags. It’s kind of obvious, in retrospect: grab more signal, lower your noise floor, and get a better result. Still, it certainly wasn’t obvious it would work out to 1200 m, and it’s an impressive feat by [nktbuilds]. We’re going to have to keep it in mind next time we lose our keys.

Of course this doesn’t mean you should jump to Bluetooth for distance communications. You’re still better off sticking with something like LoRA for that, especially since it’s good to hundreds of miles if you can get line-of-sight — or even tens of thousands with the right setup.

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Wall Panels With 3760 Antennas Can Increase Wireless Range

February 15, 2020 by 34 Comments

Most of us know that to get the best possible WiFi signal, you want there to be as few walls as possible between you and the Access Point. But that might soon change, as researchers at MIT have found a way to make surfaces increase signal strength. Called RFocus, the technique uses a wall panel covered in simple antennas to dynamically focus or reflect RF energy towards a intended receiver.

The normal methods to increase wireless range usually involve increasing the transmitter output or adding larger, more efficient, or directional antennas to the receivers and transmitters. But these techniques are limited when you need to the reduce power consumption and size of the devices. The MIT teams approached the problem from a completely different angle, by optimizing the environment.

The wall panel in question consist of 94 PCBs, each containing 40 passive antenna elements in the form of copper rectangles. Each element is a quarter wavelength long (125 mm for 2.4 Ghz), and on its own it doesn’t have any real effect on the signals, allowing it to pass through the panel. Between the ends of elements are small RF switches, that can close to combine two antenna elements into single half wavelength antenna, creating a reflector. When this is applied across the panel in different patterns it can effectively beamform the signal to focus it at different points in space.

The RF switches are connected to shift registers, which are all controlled via a single SPI bus with an Arduino. Each RF switch is activated in a pseudo-random sequence, changing the configuration of the panel 10,000 times in 100 ms. The signal strength at the receiver is reported to the panel controller for each configuration, allowing the controller to select the best configuration for any single transmitter. In a scenario where multiple low-power sensor nodes are deployed, this can allow the receiver to “focus” on each node in turn. The full paper is a very interesting read, downloadable as a PDF.

RF is generally considered the black magic of electronics, but it can all become a bit clearer with a basic knowledge of antenna theory and modulation schemes.

Thanks to [Qes] for the tip!

The Power Of Directional Antennas

July 3, 2019 by 32 Comments

AM broadcasting had a big problem, but usually only at night. During the day the AM signals had limited range, but at night they could travel across the country. With simple wire antennas, any two stations on the same frequency would interfere with each other. Because of this, the FCC required most radio stations to shut down or reduce power at night leaving just a handful of “clear channel” stations for nighttime programming. However, creating directional antennas allowed more stations to share channels and that’s the subject of a recent post by [John Schneider].

When it comes to antennas, ham radio operators often think bigger is better. After all, hams typically want to work stations far away, not some specific location. That’s not true in the commercial world, though. The big breakthrough that led to, for example, cell phones was the realization that making smaller antennas with lower power at higher frequencies would allow for reuse of channels. In those areas the focus is on making cells smaller and smaller to accommodate more people. You can think of AM broadcasting as using the same idea, except with relatively large cells.

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