Pine Needle Sized Radio Waves

Wireless, or Wifi, is hot these days. But rare is the person who actually understands anything about how this stuff works. Below is a chunk of text from a wireless manufacturer's website about how Wifi signals travel. I'm trying to learn all this for my future plans...

"A radio wave travels through the air about the size of a pine needle. If the antenna is vertically polarized the pine needle must remain vertical, as sent. If the signal hits an obstruction the signal will flip or rotate into multiple positions as it gets to the receiving radio's antenna where it will be seen as noise. The vertically-polarized antenna will not capture that signal. A multi-polarized antenna, one that sees rotating signal on all polarizations, will succeed at capturing that signal. Please see our WiFi-Plus line of multi-polarized, tree-penetrating antennas for these applications.

In a circularly-polarized antenna, the plane of polarization rotates in a corkscrew pattern making one complete revolution during each wavelength. A circularly-polarized wave radiates energy in the horizontal, vertical planes as well as every plane in between. If the rotation is clockwise looking in the direction of propagation, the sense is called right-hand-circular (RHC). If the rotation is counterclockwise, the sense is called left-hand-circular (LHC). Please see our Luxul line of circular-polarized antennas."


GET IT?