WiFi 6E MIMO antenna system for IoT access points

18th November 2020

Alex Lynn

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The Antenna Company has announced a new WiFi 6E MIMO antenna system designed to increase network capacity, extend range and reduce latency in enterprise and industrial IoT networks. The antenna system enables simultaneous operation in the 2.4, 5 and 6GHz frequency bands, resulting in an additional 1.2GHz of spectrum an increase in available channels.

“The adoption of high performance WiFi 6E antenna systems is a key enabling technology to fully realise the benefits of the unlicensed spectrum between 5.925 and 7.125GHz,” said Mark Hung, VP Technology and Engineering at the WiFi Alliance.

Optimised for seamless integration into access points, The Antenna Company’s design supports a total of 15 antennas, including dedicated 4x4 5GHz + 4x4 6GHz + 4x4 2.4/5GHz WiFi antennas. Cross-pair WiFi antenna isolation of greater than 45 dB is achieved for concurrent operation in the 5GHz band.

An additional 0.9/2.4GHz IoT antenna is included to enable IoT use cases, along with tri-band 2.4/5/6GHz antennas for radio spectrum management. The entire antenna system is mounted on a metal backplate to enable mechanical, thermal and RF integration with the access point.

The design also comes with an Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) option to enable Real-Time Location System (RTLS) services such as access control, indoor navigation, asset tracking and contact tracing. The UWB antennas support channels 5 and 9 for worldwide spectrum coverage. To avoid coupling and detuning between antennas, greater than 30 dB of isolation is achieved between the UWB and WiFi antennas.

The WiFi 6E + UWB antenna system also features:

Compact design that enables size reduction of enterprise access-points by 20% or more, without sacrificing antenna system performance.
Low input impedance essential to achieve peak data rates for 80/160MHz channels.
Uniform radio coverage to avoid nulls and blind spots.

“WiFi 6E enables the capacity, speed and latency needed to support the shift in network usage for Enterprise and Industrial IoT markets. The addition of UWB gives our customers a scalable platform to offer new RTLS services,” added company CEO David Favreau.