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Scottish Scientists Create World's Smallest Smart Antenna
judgecorp writes "Each generation of smartphones actually has more dropped calls and worse battery life than the last, because antenna design has fallen behind, says Edinburgh-based Sofant Technologies. The firm has made a tunable, steerable RF antenna using micro-electro-mechanical-system (MEMS) which it says will change all that. It's based on research from Edinburgh University and is designed to get the best out of LTE/4G."
The firm has made a tunable, steerable RF antenna using micro-electro-mechanical-system (MEMS) which it says will change all that.
IANAE (I am not an Engineer), but looking at the picture in the article, is that little speck the actual antenna, or are they talking about developing some new antenna sub-component? I mean, can something that small intercept a reasonable amount of power flux?
No, each generation of smart phones has shorter battery life because they put bigger brighter screens on them and are connecting to higher-speed networks that require faster processing or more hardware to encode and decode the data. Display power dominates most smartphones and is closely followed by general processing power when used as a web appliance rather than as a phone.
And as an RF engineer, I have this to say about their antenna claims:
If that picture in the article is any indication, it's much too small to be an efficient antenna in even the highest 4G bands. An antenna can't be made arbitrarily smaller than a half-wave resonator. Its job is to induce fields that will radiate in space. If it's much smaller than a half-wave, the fields will be too bound to the resonating structure. This means that much larger currents are required to induce the same field so the Q of the antenna has to go up, which means the bandwidth goes down. That makes it more vulnerable to detuning due to objects in the near field, i.e. within about a half-wave of the antenna. What they are showing is almost certainly a near-field coupling device that works by coupling RF to a much antenna.
Checking between the Apple iPhone 4, 4s, 5.
http://www.apple.com/iphone/compare-iphones/
Standby time has gone from 300 hours (4) to 200 hours (5).
While browsing on 3g has gone from 6 to 8 hours (4 to 5).
Wifi has stayed the same, but diped with the 4s to 9 (from 10).
Checking the Motorola droids:
And the first Droid listed talk time 385 minutes (6.4 hours)and standby time: 270 hours
DROID RAZR listed at 750 minutes (12.5 hours) talk time and standby time: 205 hours
DROID RAZR MAXX is listed at 21.5 hours of talk time and 380 hours of standby time.
So if we are talking about Apple, they don't seem to be getting better relative to their loss of standby time. With Motorola at least you can by a phone that get's a much longer talk time and standby time.
From the other quick searches I did, it seems like the earlier iPhones used to be leading the pack in battery life. Clearly, not the case anymore..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Droid
http://www.motorola.com/us/consumers/DROID-MAXX/better-battery/96406,en_US,pd.html?selectedTab=tab-2&cgid=mobile-phones#tab
http://www.motorola.com/us/consumers/DROID-RAZR-BY-MOTOROLA/78281,en_US,pd.html?selectedTab=tab-2&cgid=mobile-phones#tab
No true Scotsman would have such a small antenna!
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
can't tell what denomination that coin is so can't tell exactly how small it really is...it's either a five pence piece or ten pence piece and the ten pence piece is twice the size of what we call the tiddler. Is it too much these days to expect people to put a small one inch and one centimetre scale next to the items when photographing them?
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Finally, now I'll be able to phone my friend and listen to her play the world's smallest violin.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
If it's Scottish, it's probably crap.
Heeeeeey, nice logo.
Yes, just like all the other Scottish inventions, like the telephone, penicillin, radar, the pneumatic tyre, anaesthetic, and many more.
Great marketing spin, but it's nonsensical.
Antennas don't use much power to begin with, if any at all.
And dropped calls: in my experience indeed if you jump on the latest-network-type bandwagon all the time you have more dropped calls. When 3G was new, I moved to 3G, to have more dropped calls than on 2G (from once a year to once a month maybe, nothing spectacular) - more white spots due to incomplete network roll-out. I've moved back to 2G and am still on 2G, as it just works.
3G is just as good by now, I'm sure, but why pay more for effectively the same?
3G uses more power than 2G. 4G probably uses even more power. Bigger displays use a lot of power. That's what cuts battery life; incomplete network roll-out causes dropped calls. Better antennas won't change that much.
It's not this one?
http://media.egotvonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/mosquito.jpg?41ed4f
That sounds plausible. My phone operates on 850MHz and, as i understand it, 1/4 wavelength is the best length for an antenna - so an 88mm length of wire should be the go. However, i'd imagine it would work best if it was a dipole. Doing a good soldering job on the connector would be a bit critical at that frequency, of course.
It probably is about time someone started selling add-on antennas for mobiles now, really - not car type ones, but ones you hook onto your phone when it's needed.
If you're trying to reference So I Married an Axe Murderer, the quote is "if it's not Scottish, it's crap!".