RF system-level expertise and responsive

    shenzhen smile is a global designer and manufacturer of antenna solutions for the mobile phone, home entertainment, and computing industries. SkyCross provides unique high-performance antenna technology bundled with RF system-level expertise and responsive regional support from its full-service facilities in the USA, South Korea, China, Taiwan, and Japan. This convenient approach empowers device manufacturers to develop winning consumer electronics products and deliver them to market faster and easier. SkyCross iMAT® MIMO antennas won the "Best Network Technology Advance" award at the Global Mobile Awards 2010 in Barcelona.

    On the technical side, the antenna must be large enough to efficiently transmit radio signals without reflecting RF energy back into the transceiver as heat, which wastes battery power. The antenna must radiate those signals on channels as low as 700MHz where the wavelength of the transmitted signal may actually be larger than the phone itself, and as high as 5GHz where the signal propagates a significantly lesser distance per unit of power output.

     On the mechanical side, the antenna must be small enough to allow sleek, thin, and compact phone designs. It must also be located within the device to maximize its ability to get signals into and out of the phone without exceeding government power and RF exposure limits. Also, antennas must be designed not to create interference or be affected by nearby objects such as transceiver modules, speakers and digital cameras.

    "Apple's genius was in utilizing a major mechanical design element as the device antenna," Riggle continued. "With the metal ring around the perimeter of the iPhone4 for the main radiating elements of the antenna, Apple eliminated the need to reserve dedicated volume within the phone for these antennas. That made the device more compact, allowed the screen to occupy as much of the front surface as possible, and enabled use of a larger battery to increase usage time between charges. Since the phone must operate on numerous frequency bands, multiple antenna elements were incorporated into the metal ring with small gaps between major radiating structures. These gaps caused problems."

    "Apple's problem spotlights how important the design of antennas can be," Riggle said. "After all, antennas are the only parts of a device that touch the mobile network and are crucial for the reliable high-speed connectivity demanded by subscribers of today's 3G and 4G wireless networks."