Swedish antenna specialist RangeAnt has announced a family of 700 to 3000MHz compact antennas for cellular, IoT and GNSS applications.

The Max antennas have a free-space efficiency of between 80 and 90%, and a VSWR below 2:1 across the operating bands. The high efficiency of the antennas delivers greater range for the available transmitter power, and improved receiver performance.

Alternatively, where reducing energy consumption is a priority, such as in IoT applications, lower transmitter power can be used for a given link range.

Max antennas are suitable for use with Bluetooth, Zigbee, sub-GHz, LPWAN (LoRa, Sigfox and Weightless), wifi, and cellular (2G, 3G, 4G/LTE and NB-IoT) wireless protocols, and GPS and GNSS reception. They help wireless module manufacturers and OEMs build products for global markets while reducing their design effort and inventory by only using one type of antenna.

Full performance is achieved without the use of a separate ground plane, allowing design freedom for mechanical and electrical engineers. The antenna can be integrated into a product without taking a ground plane into consideration and without compromising wireless reliability or signal quality.

The antennas have a patent-pending, double-sided board design where the conductor patterns are different on each side of the board. The omnidirectional antennas function as a monopole up to 1600MHz and a dipole above this frequency. They are designed for a 50Ω match in free space but when packaged within a wireless module or system, maintaining optimum efficiency may sometimes require additional matching components. The antenna board includes pads for installing surface-mount matching components, if needed.

RangeAnt offers guidance on suitable matching networks and matching services for specific applications.

“Our research indicates that Max antennas offer over 20% better performance compared with the nearest wideband antenna alternatives,” said Hans-Erik Backram, RangeAnt’s CEO. “This gives system designers greater flexibility in optimising the trade-off between operating range, data rates and power consumption for their wireless links. For the first time, they can optimise their designs while working with a single antenna, whatever the desired frequency band or wireless protocol.”

RangeAnt is a Swedish antenna design centre and manufacturer with expertise in the development of embedded antennas. The antenna R&D team has more than 25 years of experience in complex designs for everything from medical and industrial applications to mobile phones. Its track-record includes creating antenna designs for brands such as Motorola, Ericsson, Nokia and Apple.

RangeAnt is a spin-off from the Swedish design centre ShortLink. ShortLink has knowledge and expertise in the development of energy-efficient electronics for wireless communications and portable products.