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Comments on Why are antenna PCB traces square instead of rounded?

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Why are antenna PCB traces square instead of rounded?

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While doing some reading on RF designs I ran across this paragraph: Image alt text

I have never designed an RF circuit, but all the PCB trace antennas I have seen on development boards are square. For example, ESP32: Image alt text

More examples can be found online. If the important thing is the length of the antenna for the corresponding frequency, wouldn't it be better to have round corners for the trace antenna for the reasons mentioned in the paragraph above?

Edit: Lundin has expressed doubts regarding the design of the ESP32. So I feel compelled adding more examples to emphasize that this is not a one-off design. And it would be interesting if a bunch of people decided it to do one particular way without a good reason. So another antenna: Image alt text

And yet another one: Image alt text

To be fair, after more searching I did find one that has round edges: Image alt text

This does not seem to be the standard approach from what I can find.

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General comments (3 comments)
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Lundin‭ wrote over 3 years ago · edited over 3 years ago

What makes you think that antenna is properly designed though? I hear nothing but bad things about these ESP32 modules. Anyway, you want an antenna to radiate, but your don't want regular traces to radiate.

Kranulis‭ wrote over 3 years ago

@Lundin If you have some valid arguments why the antenna is not properly designed please do tell. Otherwise such question can be asked literally in response to any other design question. 'Why is this done like X?' - 'Well, what makes you think X is good?'. This does not help.

Lundin‭ wrote over 3 years ago

I'm hardly an expert on antennas, just wondering how these hobbyist modules went from hobbyist status to reference design status... Here's an interesting article on the topic though: https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijap/2018/5172960/