Radio question... How do you make the best omnidirectional receiver?

Question

I understand that the more concentrated the beam, the higher the transmit distance per power, but for high reception, what features matter - antennae shape, material of receiver, or other? Let's pretend our goal is to get high reception and not so much transmission.

2.4 ghz XXXXXXXXXXXX

Answer 1

Hi. Omni-directional antennas are almost always verticals. If you can live with a poor match then the longer and higher you get the antenna the better the RX. Increasing the effective diameter also increases bandwidth. This means tubing is better than wire, all else being equal. Some receivers are 'hotter' than others depending on the design. For shortwave reception I have used just a horizontal long wire aimed north-south.

Answer 2

An omnidirectional antenna will give you poorer reception than if you have a directional antenna. How directional you can make the antenna depends on what frequency you're operating at. If you're in the microwave region, you can make a very directional high gain antenna. If you are at 1.0 MHz, it will be tough to get an antenna with gain. What frequency do you want to listen to ?

Answer 3

the receiver can only work with the signal strength it receives so the antenna would be the critical component ( but only with a weak signal - the signal to noise ratio would be most important with a strong signal - so the receiver ! )

in reality antenna design these days is the bigger the better ( and easy to find at reasonable cost ) so the receiver is the principle component in a practical sense