AVX Releases Embedded Antenna for CAT-M and NB-IoT

In a recent release, AVX Corporation, a manufacturer and supplier of advanced electronic components and interconnect, sensor, control, and antenna solutions, has announced a new embedded, universal broadband, LTE/LPWA antenna. Reportedly compatible with all major worldwide wireless carriers and a variety of common communications protocols, the new antennas are smaller and thinner with reliable wideband performance capabilities. They have an FR4 form factor that employs patented Isolated Magnetic Dipole (IMD) technology to achieve reduced ground plane size requirements and a small keep-out area for greater design flexibility, independent tuning capabilities for application-specific performance optimization, and high performance and isolation characteristics for better connectivity and minimal interference, the company said. The antennas also exhibit high-efficiency, high gain, and high isolation characteristics from 600–2,700MHz and are designed for use in applications that leverage CAT-M and NB-IoT communication protocols. The company said they also support Sigfox, LoRa, Cellular LPWA, RPMA, and Broadband LTE (OCTA-BAND).

“Our new embedded, universal broadband, LTE/LPWA antennas exhibit superior versatility for off-the-shelf solutions, providing high-reliability performance from 600–2,700MHz in an extensive range of wireless applications within medical, industrial, telecommunications, networking, and automotive electronics,” said Mohammed Abu-Naim, RF product manager, AVX. “Their miniaturized FR4 form factor satisfies growing cross-market demands for size and weight savings and leverages our patented IMD technology to offer independent tuning capabilities for broad application-specific performance optimization. In addition, although they are ideally suited for CAT-M and NB-IoT applications, both the standard and mirrored variants are compatible with several other communication protocols and with all major worldwide wireless carriers, providing OEMs with significant savings in terms of both cost and time-to-market as well.”

The new SMT antennas are shipped in tape and reel packaging compatible with automated pick-and-place processing and currently have a nine-week lead-time.