Helix Technologies, a UK-based developer of high-performance ceramic helix antennas, has announced that it has closed its Phase B funding round with GBP 650,000 of financing provided by private investors. Helix Technologies is developing a range of lightweight, compact, high-performance, ceramic antennas for use in a wide range of demanding telecommunications and navigation applications including Internet of Things (IoT), GNSS, autonomous vehicles/driverless cars, drone delivery platforms, LEO satellite communications, personal body-worn devices and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications.
The use of a dielectric ceramic core gives its antennas unique properties including unsurpassed gain/efficiency per unit of volume and more effective and predictable behaviour in a wide range of challenging user scenarios. The company believes that the driverless car segment, both GNSS and V2X DSRC applications, represents the most immediate and compelling need and business opportunity for its helix antenna technology.
The use of the ceramic core enables the fabrication of antennas that are physically smaller than conventional antennas, behave much more effectively and predictably in a wide range of challenging user scenarios and have many compelling technical advantages which include:
- Maintaining radiation efficiency near absorbing objects (e.g. such as the human body)
- Improving the accuracy of GNSS systems in multi-path environments (e.g. in cities)
- Operation in sub-optimal orientations towards the sky
- Are able to be placed into very tightly integrated systems
- Operation in slim-devices without a ground plane
- Unsurpassed gain/efficiency per unit of volume
- Simple and robust design and construction for durability and reliability
- Un-rivalled beam-width (omni-directionality)
- Multi-frequency, tailored frequency response
These characteristics make the dielectric-loaded, multi-filar helix antenna a compelling choice for a wide range of demanding telecommunications and navigation applications including Internet of Things (IoT), GNSS, autonomous vehicles/driverless cars (GNSS/V2X/DSRC) and drone delivery platforms etc.
The company expects to have prototypes of its V2X DSRC antenna available by Q2 2018 and its NEXTGEN GNSS antenna by Q3 2018. Helix Technologies believes that its dielectric-loaded helix antennas will provide significant performance advantages over incumbent antenna technologies for next-generation GNSS and V2X applications. For more information, click here.
