New study demonstrates radio signal benefits from decades-old theory

“You can always improve signal quality by using a larger antenna, but that’s simply not practical for many wavelengths,” says Jacob Adams, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at NC State University and senior author of a paper on the work. “For example, antennas operating in the high-frequency range — 3 to 30 megahertz (MHz) — would be 5 meters long or longer. We’ve shown that DAM can improve signal quality dramatically when using much smaller antennas. How much smaller can vary, but we’ve demonstrated the concept using antennas one-third the size of a conventional antenna for a given wavelength.”