Dockon Announces Commercial Availability of Compound PxM Loop Antenna

Dockon, Inc., a technology innovation company specializing in advanced physics and electronics research, has announced to introduce the first commercially available Compound PxM Loop, or “CPL,” antenna for embedded product designs. The new Dockon reference design CPL antenna will be helpful in increasing radiation efficiency, intensity and radiated power for a given input in a small package. 

Enterprises can leverage Dockon's CPL technology using common manufacturing techniques, to deploy it in a number of wireless applications, including those that require Multiple Input & Multiple Output, or “MIMO,” and have space constraints. It can be deployed in a wide variety of wireless applications, including mobile computing devices, industrial controls, automotive, aerospace and military, medical devices, consumer electronics and stand alone antennas. 

CPL antennas are particularly helpful in providing higher gain in a smaller size with high efficiencies that were not available in such a small form factor previously. Although these antennas are easily manufactured using conventional PCB techniques, they provide a very broad bandwidth, offering more than one octave with positive gain across the band. The designs for these antennas may be etched, printed or cut from a wide variety of substrate materials, including low cost FR4 depending on application and transmit power requirements. 

According to Patrick Johnston, CEO of Dockon, the CPL technology is the culmination of more than 20 years of prior research and rewrites 60 years of assumptions about electrically small antennas, and after years of development, testing and refinement of the design process, CPL antennas deliver on the promise of compound antenna technology in an easy to manufacture format. Johnston noted that CPL is a revolution in antenna design offering a more powerful and efficient radiator over a wider band in a smaller footprint than ever before possible. 

Being the first commercially available compound field antennas that utilize both magnetic loop radiators and co-located electric field radiators, the CPL antennas surpass conventional antenna technologies which typically excite either electric or magnetic radiators, but not both. The simultaneous excitation of both radiators in conventional antennas results in an effective cancellation of reactive power, improving the overall performance and efficiency, while the CPL antenna designs commonly offer radiation efficiency in the 90 percent range. 

Dockon has announced to immediately begin licensing the CPL technology, and the company says it will provide help for improving time to market of new products for customers with unique requirements or custom applications. 

February 2010, Auckland, New Zealand-based 4G chip company Altair Semiconductor (News - Alert) partnered with Viera, Fla.-based antenna designer and manufacturer SkyCross (News - Alert) to co-develop high-performance, LTE product solutions.Under the agreement, the SkyCross iMAT MIMO antenna will be integrated into Altair’s recently announced FourGee LTE (News - Alert) USB ExpressCard User Equipment.