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 2006


 
 

Fitting an External Antenna

I meant to say - Fitting an RF testpoint for evaluation purposes or to clean up the output with an LPF

"Don't try this at home children"
 

 

Amazingly, if you're going to 'export' this unit, the road  to fitting an external antenna appears wide open ! In standard trim, it uses the ground wire of the audio lead as an antenna. There are holes on the circuit board ready for the antenna, but a couple of small mods may need to be carried out first.

Vcc of 3.3v is originally present at the antenna pad so you may need to cut a track between the two linked pads just after the PA transistor and bung a cap in there in order to provide DC blocking. If you're planning to use a short length of wire or an antenna with no DC path, you could skip this stage.

There's a cap in between ANT and GND and this needs to be whipped out as we no longer need RF going to the audio lead.

Lastly, the inductor which used to provide an audio ground for the audio lead whist at the same time preventing RF going to ground needs to be removed and linked through. In fact, an RF ground could be just taken from a suitable point but hey, there's a hole there, why not use it?  

 
This is the back of the board with all the modifications done.

To the right of the board, you may just notice that I have moved the cap which originally sat between the two antenna pads to another position just after the output transistor. The track below it naturally needed to be cut.

Also, the inductor has gone and in its place is a blob of solder.

Below shows the job in more detail. 

 

 

The two lovely holes which Chaoyu gave us are in fact a multiple of 0.1" apart so if you knock out three pins, a standard header drops straight in.

I used this because I had run out of small PCB pins.

The back of the housing could, in fact, be drilled to accept a socket. This time round, I went for a flying RG174 miniature co-ax soldered to the two pins I had created. This was terminated with a suitable BNC male.

This coax exited out of the port where the audio signal socket usually docks.

 

Test Results

Power is measured at approximately 18mW out with the power level slightly lower towards the top end of the band. The match to a 50Ω load was as near perfect.

This mod has been carried out on similar model with the output measured at 10mW. Analysis with this device on the spectrum analyser shows some very pronounced harmonics which would not be an issue at 5nW erp but need to be considered very seriously if these units are connected up. The second harmonic is only 8.2dB down from the fundamental, so a tad over 1mW.

The plot shows the fundamental, 2nd, 3rd and the (30dB down) 4th.

spectral output

 

 

 

 

CY-668A Technical Description

Connecting to a PA

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