High-performance Antenna for Smart Home: Molex Solutions

In the Internet of Things (IoT), the connection is a necessity. Fortunately, even a single antenna can transmit and receive unprecedented amounts of data. Today's home has to do much more than look good: it has to communicate correctly with all the appliances inside.

With the increasing pervasiveness of sensors and interconnections and the consolidation of cloud technology, today's connected home has further evolved, allowing the interconnection of cloud computing devices and services through greater interoperability, reducing the need for drives by the 'man. Speech recognition technologies are continually evolving; for decades, they have suffered applications due to poor reliability. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) allow computers to "guess" more effectively what humans are trying to communicate rather than process what they are saying. The whole idea behind the smart home is to have everything talking to everything.

The heart of the smart home is its central unit, which connects and manages a certain number of peripheral devices. To exercise full control of the smart home, the user accesses the system through dedicated interfaces. The miniaturization of electronics has improved safety, comfort, and practicality for consumers, with the advantage of less space and reduction of costs. For the remote control of the smart home, antennas are studied to optimize the transmission protocol.

Compact, efficient, high-gain antennas, combined with massive expansions of wireless and data networks, have changed the ways of several devices for the smart home. The external antenna has given way to PCB and internally cabled antennas in practically all of today’s connected devices. In response, Molex Antenna Products provide many choices to designers of wireless-enabled devices that support one or more protocols, including Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Zigbee, and WLAN. Molex offers antennas in various packaging, such as SMD mounting, with a maximum radiation efficiency over a wide range of wireless applications.

2.4/5-GHz and 900-MHz ultra-thin Ceramic and LDS/MID Antennas offer cabled, flex, and PCB formats to enable fast and easy RF integration into connected systems and areideal for embedding high-performing internet and data connectivity in compact devices for the smart home. Molex’s 1461530100 antenna unit is a stand-alone balance antenna with a MHF connector. Intended for the Internet of Things applications, it supports 2.4GHz/5.0GHz Wi-Fi connectivity, BLE, Bluetooth, Thread, Wireless Hart, and Zigbee protocols. The antenna measures 34.90mm x9.00mm x 0.10mm and has an attachment cable 100.00mm long (figure 1). ZigBee is based on the IEEE's 802.15.4 personal-area network standard and has been around for more than a decade. It is considered a good alternative to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for smart home sensors. A typical example is ZigBee-enabled light bulb and light switch.

In recent decades, technology has transformed homes into real "functionality centers": entertainment, environmental management, work, fitness, safety, and more. Integrated systems for "Smart Home" are spreading the latest generation of connected devices on various consumer markets.

Featured Molex Antennas

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