Engineering Commons^™

Directional Patch Antenna Array Design For Desktop Wireless Internet, Noah Snyder

Electrical Engineering

To improve desktop wireless internet access, two patch antenna configurations were investigated in order to find an alternative for a dipole antenna, which is commonly used for Wi-Fi access. A Linksys WMP54G pci-card wireless adapter was used to test three antennas for 802.11g communications. The standard WMP54G dipole antenna and two patch antenna configurations were tested for Wi-Fi signal strength. The antennas were also tested in Cal Poly’s anechoic chamber to obtain resonant frequency and gain measurements. A 2.437 GHz center frequency, 72 MHz bandwidth antenna consisting of a single microstrip patch was constructed. After the patch antenna was determined …