The accidental antenna and how to make one

There are antennas, and then there are accidental antennas. Accidental antennas are the noisemakers of your PCB design. They are created when the board's copper takes on a role beyond its job of connecting point A to point B.

If an accidental antenna did not wreak havoc on the test bench or with the initial prototype, their presence often would be felt during FCC testing, when the project is already a dollar short and a day late.

This webinar will examine accidental antennas and provide some guidance as to how to avoid creating them. The three objectives of this webinar:

• Does a properly created microstrip behave as an antenna?
  

• What changes can be made to increase/decrease such behavior?
  

• What makes a good shield?
  

As much as we would like to boil this down to simple "rules of thumb," some concepts should first be reviewed. We encourage you to review our recent publicly released videos that will provide additional information that you may find beneficial:


Transmission Line AC Impedance    

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What is 50 Ohm Impedance?         

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Q&A from Webinar

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