A large part of any IoT device is connectivity to the Internet. A look at the history of digitalization to date shows that the number of connected devices is growing exponentially which leads to the technological progress speeding up. Over the next decade, this number is expected to increase dramatically, with estimates ranging from 25 billion to 50 billion devices in 2025. This requires highly reliable wireless connectivity in moderate conditions that meets the stringent requirements of open source hardware cards. However, current antennas are in need for modernization: Firstly, the size is an important factor in determining which antenna to utilize. Customers demand small antennas to be able to use the remaining space in the integration of other electronic or radiofrequency components or just to make the device smaller to be easily integrated. Secondly, the multiband operation represents one of the major bottlenecks for the industry to maintain the competitiveness of the antenna into the global market of IoT devices. With numerous standards deployed in the market, spreading over multiple frequency bands and using different communication protocols, choosing the right wireless connectivity technology for an IoT application can be quite challenging for companies. Thirdly, being in the heart of every IoT product, the design of the antenna, becomes especially cumbersome as every product currently requires a fully customized antenna. This considerably increases the complexity in all the stages that form the product design cycle. This results a slowdown of the time-to-market while increasing both design and manufacturing costs.
