Jury-rigged SMA connector
 

I'm a UCF student working on an indoor mobile robot positioning system
based on RFID, and I want to connect the SMA cable of a 13.56MHz
single-loop antenna to two pins of a straight-pin header on an RFID
reader.

My question is, will the characteristics of my antenna be shot to
pieces if I just solder jumpers from the contacts of the coaxial SMA
cable to the two header pins? Is it going to cause noise, interference,
etc. to use those two straight wires for a short distance instead of
the central wire and braided sheath?

antenna:
http://www.ti.com/rfid/docs/manuals/...AdataSheet.pdf
reader:
http://www.ti.com/rfid/docs/manuals/...DCrefGuide.pdf

Thanks!
Nathaniel

Jury-rigged SMA connector
 

No it won't be a problem. You just need to keep such leads short with
respect to a wavelength at the frequency of operation, and, well,
13.56MHz is around 20m wavelength, so you won't have a problem with a
couple centimeters of wire.

Personally, as a matter of style, I'd probably solder a mating SMA
connector directly to the header using the shortest possible wires and
then add some hot glue or epoxy to mechanically stabilize the connector
to the header, but that's just me :-) It makes it easy to add more
cable later if you need.

You could also cut the SMA off the cable and solder the coax center
conductor and braid to the two header pins. I feel like it's probably
pretty easy to short out an SMA with solder blobs.

Dan
N3OX
www.n3ox.net


wrote:
I'm a UCF student working on an indoor mobile robot positioning system
based on RFID, and I want to connect the SMA cable of a 13.56MHz
single-loop antenna to two pins of a straight-pin header on an RFID
reader.

My question is, will the characteristics of my antenna be shot to
pieces if I just solder jumpers from the contacts of the coaxial SMA
cable to the two header pins? Is it going to cause noise, interference,
etc. to use those two straight wires for a short distance instead of
the central wire and braided sheath?

antenna:
http://www.ti.com/rfid/docs/manuals/...AdataSheet.pdf
reader:
http://www.ti.com/rfid/docs/manuals/...DCrefGuide.pdf

Thanks!
Nathaniel

Jury-rigged SMA connector
 

At- 13.56 GHZ; Probably, at 13.56 Megs, quite
doubtful !

wrote:
I'm a UCF student working on an indoor mobile robot positioning system
based on RFID, and I want to connect the SMA cable of a 13.56MHz
single-loop antenna to two pins of a straight-pin header on an RFID
reader.

My question is, will the characteristics of my antenna be shot to
pieces if I just solder jumpers from the contacts of the coaxial SMA
cable to the two header pins? Is it going to cause noise, interference,
etc. to use those two straight wires for a short distance instead of
the central wire and braided sheath?

Jury-rigged SMA connector
 

Thank you!

wrote:
No it won't be a problem. You just need to keep such leads short with
respect to a wavelength at the frequency of operation, and, well,
13.56MHz is around 20m wavelength, so you won't have a problem with a
couple centimeters of wire.

Personally, as a matter of style, I'd probably solder a mating SMA
connector directly to the header using the shortest possible wires and
then add some hot glue or epoxy to mechanically stabilize the connector
to the header, but that's just me :-) It makes it easy to add more
cable later if you need.

You could also cut the SMA off the cable and solder the coax center
conductor and braid to the two header pins. I feel like it's probably
pretty easy to short out an SMA with solder blobs.

Dan
N3OX
www.n3ox.net


wrote:
I'm a UCF student working on an indoor mobile robot positioning system
based on RFID, and I want to connect the SMA cable of a 13.56MHz
single-loop antenna to two pins of a straight-pin header on an RFID
reader.

My question is, will the characteristics of my antenna be shot to
pieces if I just solder jumpers from the contacts of the coaxial SMA
cable to the two header pins? Is it going to cause noise, interference,
etc. to use those two straight wires for a short distance instead of
the central wire and braided sheath?

antenna:
http://www.ti.com/rfid/docs/manuals/...AdataSheet.pdf
reader:
http://www.ti.com/rfid/docs/manuals/...DCrefGuide.pdf

Thanks!
Nathaniel