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Smart home solutions are steadily becoming more integrated into virtually all electronic devices within homes. Where smart speakers, smart lighting, smart thermostats, and hubs were the early entrants into the smart home, today, we see smart home variants of all major appliances—sump pumps, garage doors, EV chargers, electrical panels, breakers, and even more interconnected entertainment systems.
All these devices have something in common. They require some form of communication channel to a hub, cloud services, or an on-site device to perform the provisioning, initial installation, and programming for control. While smart home hubs, gateways, and home internet routers and modems often require or benefit from hardwired Ethernet, most smart home devices make use of wireless communication protocols to avoid the need for homeowners or installers to route hardwired Ethernet throughout a home. As such, most smart home devices use wireless communication services requiring IoT antennas.
This blog will discuss how these IoT antennas factor into the latest smart home advancements and look at some of the newest communications solutions.
Smart home IoT antennas can be of many different form factors and operate on various protocols. The most common smart home wireless protocols are Wi-Fi®, Bluetooth®, Bluetooth Low Energy, Zigbee, Near Field Communication (NFC), and, increasingly, cellular connectivity, such as 4G LTE or 5G. Specific vendors also use several proprietary wireless protocols, but most smart home wireless devices made now conform to common wireless standards and allow for interoperability through industry consortium standards, such as Matter.
Though there are ongoing updates to Wi-Fi standards to allow for more efficient low-bandwidth applications, Bluetooth and Zigbee are predominately used for provisioning, relatively low throughput, mesh, and intermittent wireless communications. Wi-Fi is mostly used for higher bandwidth applications like security camera streams, connections to gateways, personal electronic devices, appliances, or standalone devices that don't use gateways. NFC and RFID are often used to facilitate wireless pairing or provisioning but require extremely close proximity (a few centimeters) to other NFC/RFID-equipped devices for communication. Some smart home devices also use cellular connectivity for data services, but they are more common for mobile devices; although, remote security systems may also use cellular connectivity. As robotic systems, such as autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), become more common in homes, cellular connectivity will likely also become more common. Early examples of AMRs are vacuum robots, autonomous lawnmowers, and future humanoid robots. Additionally, GNSS/GPS are also commonly used for tracking and pathing in mobile smart home devices.
In order to convert the electrical signals transmitted from these smart home devices to electromagnetic waves that can be carried over the air medium to other smart home devices, antennas complying with wireless protocol requirements are needed. To meet these diverse needs, there are dedicated IoT antenna types for each wireless protocol (Figure 1). There are also multiband, multi-protocol, and multi-service IoT antennas that operate over several common wireless standards or frequency bands.
Figure 1: IoT antennas come in different form factors to meet an array of wireless protocols as they effectively convert the guided transmit signals from smart home devices to electromagnetic waves that are carried over the air medium to other smart home devices. (Source: Mouser Electronics)
These IoT antennas come in a variety of form factors to best suit the smart home device application, wireless protocols being used, and the housing design of the device. For most modern smart home devices, the antennas are concealed within the device's housing for ease of use and to ensure the antennas aren't damaged during setup or handling. Antennas within a device's housing can be internal embedded antennas integrated into one of the device's printed circuit boards (PCBs) or on-chip and module antennas that are through-hole or surface-mounted to the device circuit board (Figure 2).
Figure 2: An FPC and PCB antenna with slim profiles for easy integration into a device housing. (Source: Mouser Electronics)
External antennas are still used in smart home applications, as having an antenna external to the housing allows for more degrees of freedom for antenna design, including less stringent size and form factor constraints. In this way, external IoT antennas can be designed for higher performance and lower cost brackets than internal antenna form factors, directly resulting in more robust wireless communications, higher throughput, and longer range. This is why many wireless security cameras use external antennas, while smart lighting devices use embedded or on-chip antennas. For these applications, the devices’ performance requirements and form factors present design constraints that result in different outcomes for an optimal antenna selection. For extremely compact devices, on-chip, module, or embedded antennas are often the most viable.
It is important to note that for an antenna to receive and transmit signals efficiently in a desired direction, the obstructions between the transmitting and receiving antennas must be limited. This includes aspects of the housing or device design, which is why antennas typically need to be external to the circuit boards and wiring. In space-constrained applications, this is often difficult to achieve with discrete antennas without resulting in co-site interference or unwanted coupling, where on-chip, module, and embedded antenna designs can shine.
In applications with multiple wireless protocols and performance requirements that don't allow for a single multi-protocol antenna, it is necessary to integrate multiple antennas into a design. Since multiple antennas within close proximity can lead to co-site interference issues, careful selection and placement of the antennas are required. With the appropriate circuits or wireless protocol modules that feature multiple protocols, it is possible to use the same antenna for two or more wireless protocols. However, pairing an antenna for multi-protocol use often requires careful selection and evaluation of many parameters to ensure the pairing meets certification requirements and regional spectrum regulations.
For designers navigating the challenges of selecting the right antenna to support multiple IoT devices running in a variety of wireless protocols, Amphenol RF offers IoT antenna solutions that cover a wide range of frequencies across a variety of configurations. Developing home automation requires efficient wireless communications, and with an antenna portfolio including embedded, internal, and external antennas, Amphenol RF brings high efficiency and superior performance to various smart home applications. These antenna solutions are easy to implement and include cellular, Wi-Fi, GNAA, Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy, LoRa, WLC, and NFC options. Such a broad offering of RF interconnect components enables the future of smart homes by meeting the demands of design-specific constraints.
To remain competitive, home electronics manufacturers are faced with having to integrate smart home capabilities into their products. This rising trend is driving the need for diverse, high-performance IoT antennas to meet the varied requirements of smart home applications. Meeting these needs is complicated by different wireless communication protocols and a host of design considerations. However, offerings such as Amphenol RF’s portfolio of IoT antennas solutions help designers reduce IoT design cycles with an antenna specifically tailored to your application. Whether for cellular networks, Wi-Fi, GPS, or RFID systems, these IoT antennas ensure reliable and high-performance connectivity across a wide variety of connector options and antenna configurations for embedded, internal, and external antennas. The future of smart home automation is bright, and with thoughtful design and the right technology choices, we can look forward to increasingly intelligent and interconnected living environments.
Principal of Information Exchange Services: Jean-Jacques DeLisle Jean-Jacques (JJ) DeLisle attended the Rochester Institute of Technology, where he graduated with a BS and MS degree in Electrical Engineering. While studying, JJ pursued RF/microwave research, wrote for the university magazine, and was a member of the first improvisational comedy troupe @ RIT. Before completing his degree, JJ contracted as an IC layout and automated test design engineer for Synaptics Inc. After 6 years of original research—developing and characterizing intra-coaxial antennas and wireless sensor technology—JJ left RIT with several submitted technical papers and a US patent.
Amphenol RF now includes the Amphenol Connex product line. Amphenol RF is the world leader in the design, manufacture and supply of RF connector systems for the automotive, broadband, instrumentation, internet, military/aerospace and wireless infrastructure markets. With the combination of their global footprint and experience extending over a half-century, Amphenol RF is your RF Global Solutions Provider for the 21st Century.