CC2530 Chip antenna reference design

Hi Lucio,

I'm working to find the right chip antenna such as you; maybe You might see this document: http://focus.ti.com/lit/an/swra161a/swra161a.pdf

Maybe Johanson Technology's chip antennas and Murata's baluns are good choice.

Bertan

Hello,

Do you have any news on this topic?

I´m currently designing a prototype with a CC2520 and a CC2591. I also want to use a chip antenna, I plan to use a chip antenna from Fractus.

Joerg,

The CC2520 and CC2591 require very good matching components to achieve the maximum power of the CC2591.     This will deliver 20 dBm to the antenna.  Chip antennas has low efficiency so your range will drop by approximately half the range.   A PCB antenna tune correctly can achieve 80% or higher efficiency.  So if you are going for distance then you do not want a chip antenna.   We have worked out the matching values for the CC2520 and CC2591 with proper layout.  You need to contact Grant Christiansen at TI for the layout.  grant.christiansen@ti.com.  

Best Regards

Rea Schmid

Low Power Wireless & Antennas

Rochester, MN

Locio,

If you are satisfied with the preformance of the chip antenna,  they tend to be half the distance of a whip or PCB antenna then you need to select the layout instructions fromt he antenna vendor.  IF the ground and feedline are not copied correctly you will not achieve the range from the vendors antenna.   Most provide a reference layout for their chip antenna to match 50 ohms.   You can use either a discrete balun match or a component balun match each requires knowledge of RF trace layout to the antenna matching.  Check AN068 which shows an example of doing a discrete design or copy the reference design.  This means both layer stacking and trace lengths.

Rea Schmid

TI Low Power Wireless Engineer

Thank you Rea for your suggestions.

Through our distributor I have sent my design to TI (Chipcon) to Norway and someone took a look at it. Unfortunately nobody worried about my chip-antenna :-( But I was told to use an additional lowpass-filter in front of the antenna to comply with the European standards. I was told that the original design has some violations regarding the second and third harmonic. So I made a new dewsign including a lowpass filter.

On the other side there´s no other alternative for me than a chip-antenna. I have to follow some conditions: my rf-module has to be very slim. The PCB-antennas that I have found are all to wide for my module. So I had to choose a chip-antenna.

Thank you for the email-adress of Mr. Christiansen. I will contact him if there´s a later design of the CC2520+CC2591 reference design. Maybe he can take a look at my design, too. I think, they are working with the same CAD-system then we do.

For now I have to do some matching with the new design, and then we will go to an institute wit an anechoic chamber to see what´s coming out of my module. One big thing is to comply with the european standard and not to violate them. Of course we want to expand the range, but the regulations must be passed ;-)

Hi Thucydides,

  I'm working on cc2530. There are two antenna on the custom board I'm working on. Is there some way I could switch the antennas from cc2530.

Any document which would give information on this?

Thanks and Regards,

Vamsi.

The majority of our antenna designs are matched to a 50 ohm impedance. Switching between any two antenna ref designs that has a 50 ohm impedance is fine. Refer to DN035 (http://www.ti.com/lit/swra351) or AN058 (http://www.ti.com/lit/swra161) for more info.

Regards,   Richard.