Spray on Antennas

This is neat.  Antenna design has been terribly neglected, mostly because no one ever needs more that good enough, yet the potential for dramatic improvement has also been patently obvious to every technician who has inquired.

The idea of having a spray can is actually delightful.  Definitely something we can take into the woods in order to assist us in our satellite uplink.  If you are lost, one merely paints a strip on a tree in order to give one’s cell phone a super boost in range and effectiveness.

A little bit of scouting would produce a local map showing effectiveness.

Whatever it does, it certainly is more likely to catch on that a backpack ‘friendly’ device one must set up after packing in.  A spray can kit would make it in.  I wonder why tent rods are not used for this purpose also?

Spray on Antenna double cellphone transmission range for the same power

FEBRUARY 14, 2012

http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/02/spray-on-antenna-double-cellphone.html

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Chamtech Enterprises has tested a spray on antenna on a tree, among other tests, and the team was able to send a VHF signal up to 14 miles away using only the treated tree. Rhett Spencer, chief technology officer of Chamtech, said the company’s spray-on technology could make cell phones work with 10 percent better efficiency. 

The spray-on antenna was originally conceived when Chamtech was contacted by the US Military to help them create a conforming antenna for special ops since traditional antenna systems were bulky and hard to hide from the enemy. Chamtech came up with a solution which could be painted on to nearly any surface (trees, buildings and even existing antenna) which transmits and receives radio frequencies much better than standard copper wire solutions.

The end result is a technology which can enable a cell phone to transmit twice as far with the same amount of power or transmit the same distance with only half the power.

This spray-on antenna solution has been tested on RFID tags (increasing the effective range from 5 feet to 700 feet) and even an iPhone which saw an increase of 20 dBm (roughly a 40 percent increase). Chamtech is looking to collaborate with multiple industries and already has its spray-on antenna solution available for purchase.