Three Antenova antennas suit Wifi6 and Wifi6E

  • December 21, 2022
  • Steve Rogerson

UK antenna maker Antenova has announced three antennas for Wifi6 and Wifi6E.

They are a surface mounted antenna, a flexible antenna and an external antenna. All three use the 2.4, 5 and 6GHz bands and support IEEE 802.11a/b/g/j/n/ac/ax.

The SMD antenna, named Billi, part number SR43W078, measures 15 by 6 by 1mm and requires 1mm of clearance on the PCB. This suits slim devices with a small space for the antenna. In tests, it showed high efficiency across all three bands. It is suitable for pick-and-place manufacturing processes.

The FPC antenna, named Lotti, part number SRF3W077, is a flexible antenna measuring 30.0 by 8.0 by 0.15mm. It has a self-adhesive mounting for integration into small designs. This antenna does not require a ground plane on the PCB and showed high efficiency in tests.

The third antenna is Nitida, part number SRE3W084, for external mounting. It is supplied with an SMA connector and a waterproof variant is available. This antenna is simple to add to a design because it does not require a matching network.

Wifi6E brings faster networks with greater capacity that will deliver better online experiences and support simultaneous communications to many endpoints with increased security. It should make wireless networks in the office and smart home feel as fast as Ethernet.

Wifi6E adds the additional channels of the less congested 6GHz radio band to carry more data. It provides the speeds required to support 4K and 8K video, networked gaming, smart TV and video calling, and can support many connected IoT devices at large scale. It will complement 5G cellular services and is expected to become the standard in health, education, sports and entertainment markets where networks have large numbers of simultaneous users.

“These antennas will be good for high performing wireless devices that combine mobility with high throughput, for example routers and USB dongles for Wifi6 and Wifi6E, games consoles, set-top boxes, surveillance cameras, networked IoT devices and MIMO systems,” said Michael Castle, product marketing manager at Antenova. “The Lotti and Nitida antennas connect directly to a PCB which makes for an easier integration and a shorter design cycle.”

The emerging Wifi7 standard will also use the 6GHz band, so manufacturers choosing one of these antennas now will be positioned to deliver Wifi7 speeds in future.

Antenova is a developer and supplier of integrated antennas and RF products for wireless communication, consumer electronic and wireless M2M devices. Its standard antennas and RF modules are suitable for GSM, CDMA, 3G, 4G, LTE, 5G-NR, 5G, NB-IoT, GPS, GNSS, wifi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, LP-WAN, LoRa, Sigfox, Weightless-P and ISM, for M2M and IoT applications.

The firm provides design advice and technical support, including custom antenna design, engineering, integration and test services.