By James Blackman – Enterprise IoT Insights
Israeli IoT chipset manufacturer Altair Semiconductor has announced a new small antenna technology to enable the development of miniaturised IoT and wearable devices without sacrificing coverage or performance.
The technology combines an ultra-small antenna from US based Ethertronics with Altair’s ALT1250 dual-mode LTE-M/NB-IoT chipset algorithms to reduce the size of cellular wearable devices without sacrificing performance, said Altair.
Dima Feldman, head of product management at Altair, said: “Combining Altair’s modem algorithmic capabilities with a world class antenna designer has resulted in the smallest antenna design for cellular wearable devices and other tiny IoT devices, setting a new standard for antenna performance that improves coverage, power efficiency and overall user experience.”
Altair will show a prototype device, described as a “new cellular IoT wearable concept”, featuring the small-antenna solution at Mobile World Congress Americas in Los Angeles next week. The miniaturisation of wearables has been a “sticking point” for IoT developers until now.
Olivier Pajona, chief scientist at Ethertronics, commented: “Until now, wearable device manufacturers have struggled to reduce the size of their products without sacrificing cellular coverage and overall performance.”
The ALT1250 chipset includes GNSS location positioning, a RF front-end supporting all commercial LTE bands, a hardware-based security framework, and an internal application subsystem. Altair claims it is the market’s most integrated dual-mode chipset, and boasts the “lowest power consumption for the longest battery life.”
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