Radio & Antenna - Is There Such a Thing as a Perfect Match?
Current design philosophy for wireless products involves designing the power amplifier (PA) and low noise amplifier (LNA) to a 50 ohm matching impedance separately from the antenna that is also designed as best as possible over the required frequency bands to match to 50 ohm. However, the emergence of multi-band/multi-mode wireless devices has greatly impacted the antenna’s performance. In addition, the antenna’s impedance is dependent upon the proximity to the operator’s hand, head and other conductors and dielectrics. This presentation will discuss the antenna environmental factors and the common methods to circumvent the reflection effects, such as the use of a load insensitive PA or a continuously tunable antenna, and present a compromised solution - a cellular radio-antenna module - that incorporates the PA and front-end module RF electronics with the antenna, which offers optimized performance and simple, low-cost ways of adapting the matching circuit to different load conditions.

Mike Gaynor, RF Technical Director, Antenova 
PDF & VIDEO AVAILABLE

Is 2 dB Worth $2? 
When device manufacturers and engineers are cooking up new designs, exploring all the options for internal components can be a bit costly. But, what is more beneficial for device OEMs? Is it better to spend more money upfront during the initial research phase, which would be substantially more -albeit a one-time cost? Or does it make more sense time wise and financially to invest additional costs throughout the devices’ life time? Is 2 dB worth $2?
Attendees will learn the pros and cons of each choice, spending the money upfront during the initial engineering and manufacturing to create a better handset or constructing more base stations nationwide to compensate for the lack of a quality, high-performance antenna.

The presentation will cover:

• How much performance that extra 2 dB can offer
• Pros and cons of each tactic
• Which types of mobile devices need the extra 2 dB and why
• The economic trade-off between spending money upfront for 2 dB or waiting until later to get that 2 dB through network enhancements

 Jeff Shamblin, VP of Advanced Technology, Ethertronics
 PDF & VIDEO AVAILABLE

Exploiting the Advantages of Differential Feeds for Compact Antennas 
This presentation will use the compact quadrifilar antenna to illustrate the many advantages of a differential feed network.

The advantages include:

• Good isolation from the ground plane in a handset
• Better radiation pattern properties due to enhanced symmetry
• Robust immunity to hand and body effects
• A novel tuning method that allows simultaneous alignment of center frequency and impedance match (which are not easy to accomplish). This technique can be applied for tuning active antennas where standard measurement techniques cannot be used to “see” the match. Measured performance results will be presented and explained. 
  

Stani Licul, President, Maxtena, Inc.
PDF & VIDEO AVAILABLE

Miniature UHF Design Principles 
This presentation will highlight a new RF antenna design and high frequency diode technology that were combined to produce a ceramic antenna for mobile UHF digital TV reception, measuring 15 by 10 by 1.2 mm. Design principles used during the development process including ceramic substrate, antenna pattern and tuning cirucit will be discussed, along with details of the measured antenna performance.

Dani Alon, FAE Manager, RF Waves Division, Vishay Advanced Technologies 
PDF AVAILABLE

Single Structure Antenna Solutions for WWAN and Diversity Applications 
Achieving acceptable antenna performance in small devices continues to be a challenge for the designer, with complications introduced by MIMO or Diversity protocols that require co-existence of multiple antennas. To the standard metrics of antenna efficiency, gain and bandwidth are added requirements for low inband coupling, high out of band isolation, and low correlation coefficient. This session will feature example performance characteristics of single structure antennas having multiple feedpoints for a variety of platforms and air interfaces. 

Frank Caimi, Chief Technical Officer, SkyCross, Inc.
PDF AVAILABLE