RFM69 OOK compare antenna’s

The antenna design of a module like the RFM69 is important for the sensitivity to sognal and noise. Also antenna positioning is important. Putting an Nucleo STM32 with RFM69CW very close to a PC will result in a increase of several dBm’s in noise floor.

Gain 7 dB sensitivity with JeeNodes

The basic antenna design commonly used is a quarter wavelength wire antenna with ground plane.
quarterwavelengthantenna
From this informative paper from HopeRF, the manufacturer of the RFM69. Such an antenna has a 1/4 wavelength monopole, and a ground plane that serves to reflect (mirror) the wire so that one gets a half-wavelength dipole effect.

The 86mm wire (at 868MHz) connected to small JeeNode like devices is actually not having much of a ground plane. So this can probably be improved. There are very nice commercial designs for this at 868MHz and 433MHz. A.o from Conrad. So lets putthree 1/4 wavelength antenna’s to the test. The wire is compared to a home build and a commercial 1/4-wavelength with groundplane antenna. (See picture above this article, the blue wire crossing the Nucleo is the wire-antenna). Read More