Antenova was formed to commercialise the multi-band dielectric resonator antennas developed at Sheffield and Brisbane Universities. Antenova’s antennas were just one tenth of the size of other antennas and ideal for the growing mobile phone market because they supported multiple bands and would not de-tune close to the human head. They revolutionised mobile performance, increasing traffic and range, battery life and cutting dropped calls.
Since then, Antenova has devised antenna solutions for each generation of the wireless networks and a steady stream of ground-breaking antennas from Antenova have surpassed existing norms in the wireless markets and achieved step changes in size, performance and results.
For example, Antenova’s antenna Fusca, for Bluetooth networks, launched in 2007, is still in the company’s product portfolio and remains Antenova’s smallest high-volume shipment short-range wireless antenna.
More recently Antenova has been using its experience in developing small, multiband antennas for mobile phones to develop high performing antennas for LTE. Some of these antennas have active tuning to support the requirements of today’s IoT products and meet the challenges of small ground planes.
Antenova is now migrating these designs to the new 5G standards to create the next generation of embedded antennas for cellular networks.
In 2008 Antenova made a strategic move into the emerging wireless and M2M markets, and today the company is fully focused on these areas: healthcare, smart homes, energy, automotive, industry and wearables.
CEO Colin Newman said “Our first antennas were for mobile handset and laptop manufacturers, then for other kinds of portable devices. Today we offer four families of antennas – gigaNOVA, ceriiANT, lamiiANT and flexiiANT – for IoT and consumer devices. Our antennas improve performance, extend range and preserve battery life because they are small, with good isolation, superb efficiency and resistance to de-tuning.”
The company’s latest successes are the REFLECTOR antenna which operates on or near metal surfaces without detuning and the Raptor antenna, which pinpoints locations to within centimetres and enables greater accuracy in tracking and positioning devices.
Mr Newman adds, “Over the last 20 years Antenova’s engineers have worked with virtually every type of wireless concept and technology, which means our customers benefit from an unrivalled level of expertise and engineering support.”