Does the addition of an 90 deg SAM connector have any impact on antenna performance. Can we safely add such part to our DWUSB tags:
The potential effects of using such a connector are as follows:
- In general, we would expect this connector to cause an approximately 1 dB loss in signal strength, which would result in a max range reduction of approximately 5%. For most applications, such a minor performance loss will be negligible.
- If you are running a network over a very small area, you may have to start worrying about signal leakage. If other devices get too close to each other, it’s possible that they could pick up the signal leaking from the connector instead of the signal being transmitted out of the antenna. Because of the precision required by this technology, this minor difference in the point of origin and timing of the transmission can cause significant jitter in the final calculated position. If you see a significant increase in the jitter of the system when you install these connectors, you will want to put some sort of RF shielding around the connectors to prevent such signal leakage.
- If you use these connectors on only some of your DWUSBs that are functioning in the “anchor” role on your network, the difference in antenna delay across the different devices could have a noticeable impact on the accuracy of the position output. As a result, we would recommend that you keep the antennas consistent among all of the anchors in your network.
If you restrict usage of this connector to DWUSBs functioning in the tag role on your network, the only effect that we expect you to suffer from is the range reduction. The other two effects should only present themselves if you add this connector to the master or anchors on your network, so you should be able to safely add this connector to your tags with minimal impact on performance.
Thank you for the detailed response. Much appreciated.