Fractus Antennas has announced that its virtual compact, surface-mount antenna components will now be available within the NI AWR Design Environment software from April 2019. Any NI AWR user can now choose the Fractus antenna component and implement the matching network within the frequency bands from 650 MHz to 6 GHz. The new inclusion will help accelerate the development of wireless devices for Sigfox, LoRa, narrowband internet of things (NB-IoT), LTE-M, Bluetooth and other IoT and 5G/LTE networks through the NI AWR software.
The new design option is another step forward in Fractus Antennas’ commitment to getting the wireless design and antenna integration easy and complete, to accelerate the time to market of any wireless design project matching the upcoming Internet of Things (IoT) wave. While the inclusion of this new antenna library also furthers NI AWR software support for integration of RF front-end modules with single or multi-band antenna configurations for wireless connectivity. The NN Virtual Antenna components, inclusive of BAR, CUBE, ALL and RUN parts can be quickly and easily accessed by customers from within the elements browser of the software.
With the inclusion of these antenna parts, RF designers can rapidly address component integration on a printed-circuit board substrate through direct simulation of the Fractus Antennas part of choice, along with front-end components such as power amplifiers, low-noise amplifiers, and filters, as well as any required impedance matching. Front-end component-to-antenna matching can also be developed using the network synthesis module in Microwave Office circuit design software to ensure maximum power transfer between RF driving circuitry and the antenna.
The antenna is treated like any other electronic component because it does not need customization anymore and, by only adjusting the matching network to the required frequency band for each application, the schematic, including the antenna, is completed. Based on NN´s Virtual Antenna technology, the software offers a group of [S] parameters for several wireless platforms, with different PCB/ground plane form factor and clearance area dimensions. By choosing the file with the closer specs to the device the user can implement the matching network easy and fast in just a few clicks.
The Fractus Antennas Library XML library is available directly from within the elements tab of NI AWR Design Environment software and could be used from April after the first demonstration at the EDI CON China Conference (1-3 April), where customers can attend the Fractus Antennas workshop, “Antenna Boosters for IoT Devices”. Click here to register for the demo.
