3

I'm working on designing a BLE device, and have settled on using a chip antenna. It seems, however, that my BLE SoC is going to have to be on the underside of the board, which might be significantly more shielded?

If that is the case, is it possible to route the antenna feed through a via in the PCB in order to have the chip antenna in a less shielded position, without adversely affecting the RF characteristics?

The PCB itself is going to be sat 4mm down in what is effectively a 15mm deep aluminium tin with no top.

Sensors
  • 1,295
  • 14
  • 29
  • It's possible, but you wouldn't expect a decent plumber to give you a quote over the phone without looking at the job. – Andy aka Jul 08 '15 at 11:07

1 Answers1

8

There are many similar questions here, such as Should there be more clearance on RF vias with microstrip?, and Calculating Signal Loss (dB) Through Vias, and How to minimize characteristic impedance mismatches caused by vias?

Essentially, they all say to either calculate the effects by hand, or try a 3D EM field solver to simulate the physical performance. OpenEMS & Octave are free for Linux, and are very powerful.

Community
  • 1
rdtsc
  • 15,913
  • 4
  • 30
  • 67