Monarch Antenna is using Peregrine Semiconductor’s UltraCMOS PE613010 tuning-control switches in its latest compact 4G tunable antenna prototype. The company selected the PE613010 switch to showcase the "smart" switching capabilities of its self-structuring antenna (SSA) technology in mobile handsets. The patented SSA technology is the culmination of 15 years of R&D, and initial prototypes show superior performance compared to existing antenna solutions. The 4G tunable antenna delivers a high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), which translates into end-user benefits of better connectivity, faster downloads and longer battery life.
For their 4G tunable antenna, Monarch selected a bare-die version of Peregrine's PE613010 switch to minimize parasitic effects and to enable reliable and efficient tuning across the 700-800 MHz frequency range. Inside a mobile handset, the antenna is controlled by a baseband processor, which tunes to a particular channel or searches through tuning states to recover from detuning. In the antenna, three Peregrine switches provide eight (23=8) tuning states, and each state provides communication over a channel 15 MHz wide. The narrow-band nature of the antenna also makes it more efficient than a passive-antenna counterpart covering the entire 700-800 MHz band. In addition, the low on-state resistance (RON) of Peregrine's UltraCMOS switches lead to a high radiation efficiency.
Self-Structuring Antenna (SSA) is a disruptive antenna technology enabling 3G and 4G devices to deliver richer content over a multitude of protocols and to offer higher mobility. It continuously monitors the RF signal and adjusts its configuration to increase signal strength and maximize the SNR. This adjustment is accomplished through continuous "smart" switching/selection of a "set" of antenna combinations through its feedback loop. SSA not only simplifies the antenna design process, but it also counteracts some of the compromises, which had to be introduced due to packaging.
