Improved Performance in Mobile Devices with Innovative Antenna Design

With shrinking form factors and multiple antenna technologies, device manufactures are utilizing new approaches to increase performance and reduce costs. Interview with Joe Gifford, Vice President at SkyCross.

While sometimes taken for granted, antenna design is becoming increasingly important in the successful design of mobile devices and handsets.  This has become even more profound in recent years with the growing number of technologies packed into smaller form-factors, each with different frequencies and some utilizing multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) technologies.

The antenna is important since it is the only structure in a mobile device that communicates directly with the network.  How these structures are designed and where they are placed inside a device can have a big impact on how the device performs.

But designing MIMO into smaller devices comes with its own unique challenges.  With multiple antennas, more space is typically needed to ensure that the multiple antennas operate without interfering with each other.  This problem can become even more challenging when working with technologies that operate in close proximity - such as WiMAX at 2.5GHz and Wi-Fi at 2.4GHz.

SkyCross has solved this problem with its iMAT^TM technology (short for isolated mode antenna technology) which enables a single antenna to function like multiple antennas, without compromising the performance of each antenna or the industrial design of the device.  This is accomplished by utilizing a single radiating structure with multiple feed points. 

The company, founded in 2000, provides a complete host of antenna solutions for the mobile phone, home entertainment and computing industries.  The company considers itself more of a solutions company that can apply a wide variety of technologies depending on the needs of its customers.

"Many of our solutions are specific to each customer device," says Joe Gifford, Vice President at SkyCross.  "The product we develop is customer specific with SkyCross technology and techniques used in an 'artistically' developed way to solve each customer's problem."

The company is active in a number of technologies, including 802.11n and the next generation of IEEE standards.  This year alone the company will ship 120 million antennas in a variety of different market segments.

In the WiMAX space, the company works with all the major players and even includes Intel as one of its investors (the only antenna company that Intel has an investment in).  Last year, SkyCross technology was included in Airspan's MiMAX Quad-Band USB dongle - the first WiMAX Forum certified USB device and winner of several industry awards.  The device was certified to operate in the 2.5GHz band, but is also designed to operate in every frequency from 2.3GHz to 5.9 GHz.

SkyCross technology was included in one of the first WiMAX CPEs on Sprint's Xohm network in Baltimore and was selected by WiMAX operator VMAX in Taiwan for use in their USB dongle.  SkyCross was also recently selected as the antenna provider for several devices on the UQ Communications network in Japan and the Clearwire network in the United States.

"We have developed the technology that sits on the reference design of WiMAX chip companies such as Samsung, Beceem , Sequans, GCT and others," says Gifford.  "Some of those reference designs are then included in products produced by Novatel, Sierra Wireless and Huawei."

The company also considers the RF approach that it takes in designing the electrical-mechanical radiating device as part of its key advantage.  "When people think of an antenna, they typically think of a radiating metal device that you put in a device," says Gifford.  "With our approach, we develop some type of electrical-mechanical radiating property, it could be anything as inexpensive as possible, and we use that to excite the entire device that it is going into.  For example, with a USB dongle, we can get the entire device to radiate."

From a cost/performance perspective, the company claims that its iMAT technology can cut the cost in half and boost performance and efficiencies 2X when compared to traditional technologies.  With today's smaller devices, operating at higher frequencies and non-line of site environments, these performance gains can be significant - improving the subscribers experience while on the network and reducing overall network costs.

Operators such as Clearwire have taken notice and are influencing the design of handsets by insisting that suppliers consider using SkyCross.  "We have been working with Clearwire, and they liked what they saw in the performance metrics," says Gifford.  "We do a great job, especially in small form factors and can improve the antenna performance significantly compared to other traditional solutions."

 

Wednesday, September 09, 2009 in Equipment  | Permalink |  Comments (0)