Web-Based Antenna Integration Tool Leads Designers to the Right Choice
You can get everything else right in an RF-capable system, but making the wrong choice with the antenna will render the rest of the work moot. A poor antenna selection can cause signal attenuation, impedance mismatches, curtailed range, and shortened battery life.
To give RF design engineers a helping hand, Kyocera AVX launched its Antenna Integrator Studio (AIS), a web-based RF engineering tool that's said to streamline, accelerate, and optimize antenna selection and placement.
Armed with the AIS tool, it’s hoped that users can avoid guesswork and poor design outcomes. This is critical in markets that must deal with tight performance, space, and environmental constraints, including the consumer electronics, automotive, medical, industrial IoT, telecommunications, and high-speed networking industries.
Users simply enter a PCB size and the amount of required antennas. After specifying the target frequency bands, users choose their optimization priority — maximized efficiency or minimized cost — and click Analyze to learn the most suitable antenna(s) from Kyocera’s extensive selection as well as the best positions on the PCB.
Those results are coupled with interactive performance charts. Analyzing the results in detail provides evaluations of efficiency, return loss, peak gain, and radiation patterns across frequency bands.
The tool also offers downloadable DXF and 3D files for seamless PCB integration. On top of that, the Antenna Integrator Studio makes it easy to order samples and begin prototyping. Included is a roughly four-minute video tutorial that walks users through a workflow to further enhance ease of use.
This first version of the new KYOCERA AVX Antenna Integrator Studio has thousands of simulations of board-mounted embedded antennas. Future versions will offer additional features and antenna technologies.
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About the Author
David Maliniak
Executive Editor, Microwaves & RF
I am Executive Editor of Microwaves & RF, an all-digital publication that broadly covers all aspects of wireless communications. More particularly, we're keeping a close eye on technologies in the consumer-oriented 5G, 6G, IoT, M2M, and V2X markets, in which much of the wireless market's growth will occur in this decade and beyond. I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, developers, and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.
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About me:
In his long career in the B2B electronics-industry media, David Maliniak has held editorial roles as both generalist and specialist. As Components Editor and, later, as Editor in Chief of EE Product News, David gained breadth of experience in covering the industry at large. In serving as EDA/Test and Measurement Technology Editor at Electronic Design, he developed deep insight into those complex areas of technology. Most recently, David worked in technical marketing communications at Teledyne LeCroy, leaving to rejoin the EOEM B2B publishing world in January 2020. David earned a B.A. in journalism at New York University.