Evaluation Board for PCS.50.A Cellular and GNSS antenna
The Taoglas Universe PCS.50A is a patent pending active Cellular and GNSS antenna designed specifically for IoT devices with small ground planes. With an unprecedented level of integration, it combines aperture tuning and active switching technologies to provide a wideband coverage for GNSS and most 4G cellular bands, including the most challenging 700MHz bands.
The PCS.50 has an RF switch to adjust the resonance frequency of the antenna depending on the device requirements. The aperture tuning technology allows the antenna to cover the whole spectrum of 4G LTE bands by adjusting the resonant frequency of the antenna to the desired frequency band of operation. This allows the device to use the correct frequency band required by the radio module. Additionally, a second active switch can be simply added if either Cellular or GNSS needs to be selected. *
The PCS.50A is compatible with the radio modules that support RF front end control interface (RFFE). The radio module controls the active RF switch to adjust the antenna resonance frequency to operate efficiently on multiple bands and increasing the RF capabilities by 3dB compared with standard passive solutions. This will in turn improve the Total Radiated Power (TRP) and Total Isotropic Sensitivity(TIS).
The PCS.50A is easy to integrate using standard SMD technologies, and implementing the active solution is easy thanks to Taoglas’ integration support, providing different design files depending on your requirements. The antenna can be tuned by simply selecting the best switching the configuration to achieve the optimum antenna performance.
Please see section 2 of this datasheet for the key operational instructions of this antenna to ensure optimum performance. Section 3, 4 and 5 of this datasheet shows the PCS.50A antenna performance on Taoglas evaluation board PCSD.50A. Section 7 shows how to integrate the antenna into your device and the Application Note in Section 9 demonstrates the products use in different scenarios.
The PCS.50, tuned for PCBs to a size of just 40 x 50m, makes it suitable for even the smallest of IoT and CAT-M devices. Typical applications include IoT devices such as smart sensors requiring cellular and GNSS connectivity, wearables or asset tracking. The antenna itself measures just 38 x 10 x 1.6mm and as it is manufactured from high grade FR4 PCB, it is lightweight, yet robust and it is supplied on tape and reel.
Contact your regional Taoglas customer support team for quick and professional support from our senior engineering team on integration and matching of the antenna to your device.
*Depending on the capabilities of the radio module used.
