Technology projects

Wideband antenna

The projects aim is to develop a wideband printed dipole antenna with optimized tapered feeding balun for ISM and FWA. Developed by George Sergiadis ( This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ) in cooperation with MIT and the FabLab - system.



Read more: Wideband antenna

Perfect antenna

First you must download paraframe program from Neil Gershenfeld's fablab homepage for generating forms in SVG files. When we used (October 2004) paraframe it had some errors. We decided to let the antenna curve be smooth.

  • Here are the setting in the paraframe program we used to create our antenna mould:

    focus = 15 # focal length (inches)
    A = 1/(4.0*focus)
    width = 23 # 0 <= x,y <= width (inches)
    base = 2 # parabola base height (inches)
    slotwidth = .24 # slot width
    nslices = 4 # number of slices
    notchwidth = 1.0 # wire notch width
    notchdepth = .05 # wire notch depth
    notchedge = .8 # wire notch edge spacing
    nnotches = 6 # number of notches
    npts = 1000 # number of points in curve

  • In the next step you must use the cam program from Neil Gershenfeld's fablab homepage to convert SVG files to either epi files (lasercutter) or camm files (Vinyl cutter). You can use a cad tool to view the forms before you cut them out. We used Corel Draw.

  • Assemble the forms to get the antenna mould.


  • Cut the material you have chosen to fit the mould.


  • Mount the cutted material pieces together, we drilled holes in the strips and popped them together.


  • And then we got this almost perfect antenna.