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Comment by sirkneeland | Hacker News Reader

As someone with similar interests in a large Finnish company...

God help the antenna engineers assigned to this project.

Whether the antenna is part of the "endo" (and thus subject to interference from potentially unknown external modules) or àn external component itself (and thus subject to interference from potentially unknown adjacent modules) it's going to be an unholy nightmare to try and engineer.

That said, I would love if they could figure some sort of genius solution to the problem and further this concept. Wild things like this are exactly what Motorola should be doing (along with continuing to iterate on the solid Moto X)

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Wouldn't it be possible to design a self-optimizing antenna, perhaps with MEMS switches, that randomly tries different configurations to maximize signal strength?

It would also be an interesting dance to get something like this through CTIA/Carrier certification. Having gone through the early PTCRB certification stages of a module integration (integrated a pre-certified GSM module into an enclosed circuit), I remember vividly the expense, and the fact that any internal hardware changes require recertification. Something like this blurs the lines between "external" and "internal." Here's hoping the CTIA and friends will adapt.

At the risk of sounding like a complete idiot: can't they send on slightly different frequencies or wavelengths? Or: why don't they just copy the design of antennas in mobile phones?

What's different technically from mobile phones?

Antennas on mobile phones need to be designed to take into account the environment around them - other chips, other antennas, metal body of case work, likely position of head relative to phone. They are customised to the particular application.

Trying to design one that will work regardless of the combination of other components chosen is a difficult challenge.

Sort of. Mass market radios are designed for low cost and low power consumption, and the engineering cost is amortized over tens of millions of devices. For that market segment it makes sense to make a perfectly customized radio.

There's nothing to stop them from putting a self-tuning phased-array radio on a niche product. At $50 a unit extra on a volume of 200,000 it might be viable. And the tech could be amortized over a line of industrial radios too.

As someone with interests in a company that tests solutions for these kinds of problems... bring them on :D

What if the antenna were built into the frame onto which all the modules mount?

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