Got no dough for a commercial WiFi antenna? Looking for an inexpensive way to increase the range of your wireless network? A tin can waveguide antenna, or Cantenna, may be just the ticket. This design can be built for under $5 U.S. and reuses a food, juice, or other tin can.

Introduction

The collinear antenna was historically used by base station sites, stacking various 1/2 wave dipole elements on top of each other for increased gain connected by some equipment to correct for phase error between the elements of the array. The higher in frequency the better in gain you can achieve in a relatively small assembly. The eight  element array built here will yield 6dBi gain in a radome of less than a meter.

There are 3 main sections to this antenna. Starting from bottom to top of the antenna, they are the RF connector/decoupler section, the elemental array section, and the quarter-wave whip section at the top of the unit.

Objectives
• 100 Watt HF transceiver
• Voice and CW capability
• Remote antenna selection
• Remote antenna aiming (for beams)

Download Application Note