Abracon — Antennas for Connected Lighting

Abracon supplies a broad range of IoT antennas which offer high efficiency and support the RF protocols commonly used to connect the latest generation of smart lighting systems.

These include 5G and NB-IoT mobile networking, Bluetooth^® and NFC for short-range wireless, the LoRaWAN^® low-power wide-area networking standard, Zigbee networking, and license-free industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) spectrum. These RF technologies operate at frequencies between 400 MHz and 6 GHz. Wi-Fi^® networks are also almost universally available, and support high data rates.

Whip Antennas

Abracon offers a variety of external whip antennas for IoT applications. The AEACAQ190012-S868 operates at 868 MHz, and the AEACAQ190012-S915 at 915 MHz. These narrow-bandwidth antennas have a very low standing wave ratio (VSWR), and are linearly polarized. They may be combined or used as stand-alone elements in a multiple-in, multiple-out (MIMO) antenna array.

The antennas achieve up to 66% efficiency in the pass band, producing an omnidirectional output pattern while operating on low input power of up to 10 W. In connected lighting systems, these antennas provide coverage of a large area. They require no separate ground plane as the outer shielding often acts as the ground plane. This makes it easy to test and measure the system’s characteristics without the PCB.

Chip Antennas

Chip antennas offer the most compact form factor for space-constrained designs such as NB-IoT implementations. Gain is typically slightly lower than that of other antenna types, but chip antennas require substantially less input power.

The Abracon ACAR3705-SB and dual-band ACAR3005-C2WB antennas offer up to 60% and 55% efficiency at 791 MHz and 824 MHz. The ACAR3705-SB produces a wideband response between 698 MHz and 960 MHz. The dual-band ACAR3005-C2WB operates at 824 to 960 MHz and at 2,400 to 2,500 MHz.

Patch Antennas

The patch antenna is the preferred antenna type in applications in which high precision is required. Ideal for point-to-point communications or to cover a wide area, Abracon patch antennas offer high gain and are available with dual- and multi-band options. Patch antennas, which are often found in mobile phones, are lightweight, low-cost, and compact, making them ideal for integration into the wireless devices used to monitor and control connected lighting systems.

When well designed, patch antennas provide good performance over a wide bandwidth in and beyond the UHF spectrum. These antennas feature an omnidirectional radiation pattern.