We try to save save on some weight and are thinking of removing the gold SAM connectors and hard-wire the antenna to the circuit-board.
Would this impact transmission and require recalibration?
Removing the antenna connector from the DWUSB and the antenna and hard-wiring them together would not impact transmission in any way that would require a recalibration, with a couple important caveats:
- If you intend to do this to any devices that will function in the anchor role on your network, then you will have to do this to every device that will function as an anchor in your network in order to prevent any negative impact on the tracking algorithm. From the perspective of the tracking algorithm, it doesn’t matter what the antenna calibration is for any of the anchors in your network, so long as they all have the same antenna calibration.
- If you are going to do this to any devices that will function as either an anchor or a master, be aware that this procedure will produce a constant offset in their TWR results, and as a result, this will require you to recalibrate the antenna delay configuration option in order to compute accurate distances in the TWR window in the GUI.
While this change won’t require any sort of significant recalibration, there are 3 major concerns we have with attempting to hard-wire the antenna to the DWUSB:
- Connecting the trace on the antenna to the DWUSB can be very difficult, and even minor imperfections in the process of making this connection can lead to significant range reductions.
- Connecting the ground plane on the antenna to ground on the DWUSB will likely have similar issues as those seen in connecting the trace on the antenna to the DWUSB.
- It could be quite difficult to go about making such a hard-wired connection mechanically durable, so you’ll need to make sure that the hard-wired connection will be strong enough to remain intact in your normal operating environment.