Evaluation Board for UWB 6-9GHz Chip Antenna for Bands 5 to 12 Coverage
Ultra-Wideband (also known as UWB) is a low power digital wireless technology for transmitting large amounts of digital data over a wide spectrum of frequency bands typically spanning more than 500MHz with very low power for short distances.
The low power requirements of UWB mean increased battery life of sensors and tags leading to reduction in overall operational costs. Taoglas has developed various innovative and new-to-market flexible embedded UWB antennas designed for seamless integration on plastics and using highly flexible micro-coaxial cable mounting while achieving high performance where space is limited. Taoglas UWB antennas have been designed for use with the recently launched UWB modules and are also compatible with any other UWB sensor modules on the market.
The UWA.01 chip antenna, at 3.2mm *1.6mm * 0.5mm, is a small form factor Ultra-Wideband (UWB) antenna with high efficiencies across the pulsed UWB communications operational bands. It is mounted to a PCB via standard SMT reflow process. It enables designers to use only one antenna that covers most common UWB commercial bands, namely bands, 5 through 12 simultaneously.
The UWA.01antenna is a high efficiency, miniature SMD, edge mounted ceramic antenna that has a peak gain of more than 4dBi, an efficiency of more than 60% across the bands and is designed to be mounted directly onto a PCB. It is an ideal choice for any device maker that needs to keep manufacturing costs down over the lifetime of a product. Like all such antennas, care should be taken to mount the antenna at least 3mm from metal components or surfaces, and ideally 5mm for best Radiation efficiency.
The results below are based on an 80mm x 40mm ground-plane. If your ground-plane is smaller the performance will change. Optimum position for this chip antenna is in the middle of the longest edge on the PCB.
Applications of Pulsed UWB antenna Technology
Radar-These short-pulsed antennas provide very fine range resolution and precision distance and positioning measurement capabilities. UWB signals enable inexpensive high definition radar antennas which find use in automotive sensors, smart airbags, and precision surveying applications amongst many others.
Home Network Connectivity- Smart home and entertainment systems can take advantage of high data rates for streaming high quality audio and video contents in real time for consumer electronics and computing within a home environment.
Position location & Tracking- UWB antennas also find use in Position Location and Tracking applications such as locating patients in case of critical condition, hikers injured in remote areas, tracking cars, and managing a variety of goods in a big shopping mall. UWB offers better noise immunity and better accuracy to within a few cm compared to current localization technologies such as Assisted GPS for Indoors, Wi-Fi and cellular which are at best able to offer meter level precision. Tethered Indoor positioning UWB systems that measure the angles of arrival of ultra-wideband (UWB) radio signals perform triangulation by using multiple sensors to communicate with a tag device.
