I am very interested in your GE865 board http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/produc … ts_id=9297 but the only quad band antenna you guys sell are too big for something like a DIY cell phone. I’ll probably buy http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/produc … cts_id=290 with http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/produc … ts_id=9145 just for prototyping but I’ll need something smaller if I ever want to make a compact device out of the module.
Does anybody know of a smaller GSM antenna I can use?
I’ve designed a lot of GSM-based systems using custom made antennas. Cell phones and other devices that need a small antenna employ a “micro strip” antenna. These are basically traces on the PCB board, however, they can be tricky to design.
I’ve constructed dipole antennas by simply stripping the shielding back on the coax to 1/4 or 1/2 the wavelength of the frequency. For bench testing, I often just use a piece of wire cut to 1/4 the wavelength.
so soldering two pieces of wire to the U.FL connector should be sufficient for testing?
I would try just connecting a wire to the center conductor. The PCB has plenty of ground plane around the connector so you shouldn’t need to connect a wire to the ground.