QUESTION

Question

We are building a design for a customer using the SR4L034-R antenna, and it is located at the edge of a flex circuit.    We have seen some inconsistency with solder joints at the device (which can be attributed to a few reasons) - but we did just want to make sure this device is suitable for mounting on the flex portion of a rigidflex design to eliminate that as a possible barrier to high volume through-put.

Answer 1

Hello Viotale,

Yes, it can be mounted on a rigid flex but two issue will exist. One is the flexibility of the rigid flex allow a lot of movement in the solder joints and will eventually cause them to fail.  The second is that the ground mass does not allow for a strong enough ground return for the antenna to work as well as it would on a 0.8mm or thicker multi-layer PCB. There will be some degradation of the antenna performance compared to our evaluation board. It will depend on how your product will be used in the field.  You can contact out tech support email to have a full evaluation done on your device in order to ensure it works sufficiently for your requirements. techsupport@antenova.com

Best regards,

Geoff S.