Near-field is only a few wavelengths away when the antenna itself is a half wavelength in dimension. Otherwise you would calculate the size of the near field as a function of the physical dimension of the antenna and the wavelength: r2 = 2d^2/λ.

E.g. The radiating near field of a 2.4GHz antenna about 8 meters long would extend about 1km.

[1] - https://www.giangrandi.org/electronics/anttool/regions.shtml

Thanks for clearing that up!

search up beam forming, phased arrays, collimated beams and metamaterial based beam guides

Right, but even a phased array will give you sidelobes, it's only a question about reducing them, right? Your claim that there are no sidelobes at all seems a bit dubious to me.

Or is there some metamaterial "magic" going on even at the transmitter that I'm not accounting for?

:)) no magic, just solid engineering. There will always be sidle-lobes. The question is how much and what do you do with it.

> There will always be sidle-lobes.

Right, and anybody who knows enough to ask you about sidelobes likely also knows enough to know that too.

That's why, if you reply that "there are no sidelobes" you're only harming your own credibility.

A good reply is something like "there are sidelobes, but they peak at -{believable number} dB and are contained to within {small area}. We believe this is more than sufficient to address sidelobe concerns because of {standards}".

That's a reply that earns trust.

You are right of course. Point taken. Thanks :)

Reads more like he doesn't want to tell you what he's doing with the sidelobes, in case you DO get it.

Whereas the question-train you're on is at a pretty interrogative clip ..

"I'm not disclosing basic performance metrics because you might reverse engineer my secret sauce from the basic performance metrics"? Really? Seems unlikely.

"I'm not gonna discuss the finer details with people on HN who are more than likely able to exploit the same discoveries if I share too much .."

Very feasible.

These aren't finer details, they're basic metrics.

Hypothesis A: they don't want to share basic performance metrics because they contain special secret sauce!

Hypothesis B: they don't want to share basic performance metrics because they suck.

We'll see!

A few comments above you said:

> There are no sidelobes