Telecoms, Datacoms, Wireless, IoT


Antennas for LPWA comms

23 March 2016 Telecoms, Datacoms, Wireless, IoT

Within the burgeoning Internet of Things (IoT) market, certain lower data rate applications depend on low-cost, battery-operated, long-life sensors.

To meet the antenna needs of such applications, Taoglas is rolling out a new Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) antenna category, addressing the need for IoT devices that use less power, cost less to run and do not need the speeds or bandwidths offered by 4G LTE networks.

According to analyst firm Strategy Analytics, LPWA connections are forecast to have a high growth rate as part of IoT, growing from 11 million in 2014 to just over 5 billion by 2022. In contrast, LTE and cellular networks support markets that need higher-power systems for delivering large volumes of data, but these systems require significant battery power. For products such as M2M sensor devices sending low amounts of data, LPWA networks are ideal because they are one-tenth the price to run and have one-tenth the power drain. Batteries in these scenarios last 20 to 30 years instead of the three or four years of M2M products in cellular networks.

Taoglas’ series of LoRa-LPWA antennas includes models such as the external Barracuda OMB.868 (worldwide) or OMB.915 (North America) – large, high-gain, omnidirectional outdoor antennas which are ideal for the base station side of a typical LPWA network. For the devices themselves there are new direct mount FW.95, FW.86 and FW.43 monopole whip antennas and miniature embedded ILA.02 and ILA.01solutions.

The antennas use the unlicensed Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) bands of 433/868 MHz in Europe and 915 MHz in the United States, so devices don’t need costly carrier certification. They can be used for all sub-GHz protocols in the IoT LPWA market such as LoRa, LoRaWAN, SIGFOX, Weightless, Nwave and Telensa.

Working in the unlicensed bands, these antennas are ideal for manufacturers in healthcare and utilities as well as for asset tracking, which is one of the fastest growing applications along with metering and industrial/environmental monitoring.

For more information contact Andrew Hutton, RF Design, +27 (0)21 555 8400, [email protected], www.rfdesign.co.za



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