Keeping It Simple: Choosing the Right Antenna for Your IoT Project

Arguably the most-asked question we receive from Blues customers is: "So…which antenna do you recommend I use?" For better or worse, this question is also the one that can be the most difficult to answer. Our response depends on a handful of factors when crafting the right recommendation for a given IoT deployment, such as:

1. What is the physical enclosure of the device you're building?
2. In what type of environment will it be deployed?
3. Which global geographic region (or regions) are you targeting?
4. Will the device be in motion? Are you gathering location data in an asset tracking scenario?
5. Are you utilizing Cellular? LoRa? Wi-Fi? Or do you plan on using a combination...or all of the above?

For example, when Blues designed a new version of the Blues Notecarrier A, our first stop for onboard PCB antennas was Ignion, the maker of a unique omni-directional PCB antenna component and a revolutionary cloud-based antenna design tool, who also share our mission of making things easy for our customers. Ignion provided Blues with the right combination of effective and affordable design tools and implementation capacity for an omni-directional antenna that works across NB-IoT, LTE Cat-1, and Cat-M cellular protocols.

Since the creation of the Notecarrier A, Blues hasn't looked back. Blues is ALSO using an Ignion Wi-Fi antenna on the new Notecard Cell+WiFi system on module! Next up, we'd like to collectively share our lessons learned with you, along with key insights from Ignion, and an engaging story from MassMelt, a mutual customer of both Blues and Ignion!

In this webinar on Tuesday, December 5th, join the experts from Blues, Ignion, and MassMelt as we help guide you in choosing the right PCB antenna for whatever IoT product you can dream up (or are in the process of designing!). If you can't make it, register anyway and we will send you the recording.