January 20, 2005
Furukawa Electric is launching the SF2450-02, a surface-mount chip antenna with roughly twice the bandwidth of conventional products in the 2.4 GHz band(*1). The SF2450-02 was born in response to growing demand for a more streamlined way of incorporating Bluetooth(*2) electric devices, a need arising from the increasing ubiquity of mobile phones and hands-free equipment making use of the standard.
Development Background
Only a limited amount of space is available for a chip antenna, making its performance susceptible to various factors, including the installation position, layout of the peripheral components, and housing. While optimization is needed to ensure the best performance of the antenna at the time of installation, as a result of the expansion in use of wireless equipment, demand is now rising for an antenna capable of lightening the burden on optimization-related design.
The SF2450-01, a high-performance chip antenna using a unique, highly dielectric resin material, has been marketed by Furukawa Electric since 2002. The new SF2450-02, on the other hand, offers even wider bandwidth, and runs at over 400 MHz, as opposed to the 80 MHz required for Bluetooth, which both simplifies its optimization in the event of frequency variations resulting from environmental factors, and enables a less complex overall design. Further, the new antenna eliminates the need to provide a separate antenna-otherwise required due to environment/model frequency demands-thus contributing to enhanced efficiency in material management.
Features
- Compact and slim (8.8 x 2.9 x 0.7 mm), wide bandwidth (twice that of conventional antennas)
- High gain (high sensitivity), In-directivity
- Excellent thermal shock resistance thanks to the inclusion of a lead terminal
- Injection molded body-ensures consistently high quality in volume production
- Low environmental burden-utilizes lead-free solder process
- Choice of two feeding systems selectable for optimization(*3)
Future Deployment
With the SF2450-02 already under sample shipment, we are targeting a monthly production of 1 million units by the end of 2005.
Furukawa Electric, taking advantage of thermoplastic, highly dielectric materials - materials developed based on its long-nurtured technologies including antenna design and simulation technologies and electric cable sheath resin technology - and the injection molding process, capable of volume production at consistently high quality, also plans to develop a multi-band antenna for mobile phones, and an ETC antenna for automobiles, with the aim of expansion of our compact antenna lineup.
References:
(*1) 2.4GHz band chip antennas are used for wireless LAN (IEEE802.11b, IEEE802.11g) and Bluetooth applications.
(*2) hort-distance wireless technology for connecting PCs, printers, digital cameras, and mobile phones
(*3) Monopole feeding or inverted-F feeding. Monopole feeding refers to feeding with a basic antenna configuration, whereas inverted-F feeding is a type of feeding with an antenna element in the form of an inverted F.