The new antenna, developed by Birmingham University spin-out Smart Antenna Technologies (SAT), essentially bundles all existing antennas on a smartphone into one unit. Currently, smartphones need up to seven separate antennas for Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth and 3G and 4G due to physics constraints.
“Previously antenna’s needed to be physically separated due to the physics challenge of achieving good signal isolation between antennas,” explained Sampson Hu, SAT’s CEO, who developed the technology as part of an engineering research project at the University of Birmingham.
“It’s like if the person beside you is shouting loudly it is very difficult to hear what the person 50 meters away is saying.”
The new design overcomes the challenges by isolating individual ports to allow uninterrupted reception on one antenna while another one is transmitting. The whole system, however, is designed as a single unit instead of multiple antennas used traditionally.
“SAT...