Periodic Reporting for period 1 - VARIANT (Multiband miniature antenna for Open Hardware IoT Platforms)
Période du rapport: 2019-05-01 au 2019-08-31
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.
The innovative and disruptive solution devised by Fractus Antennas for the growing demand in the IoT sector is Variant™, the first miniature multiband antenna designed to be used on open hardware IoT platforms. This project aims at redesign the entire IoT antenna industry due to the features that Variant™ offers. To achieve this goal NN must develop its technology to create a range of products that fit the IoT market, which requires to cover a wide variety of use cases with growing complexity.
Based on work completed to date, we identified the main challenges for the next stage of our product development that forms the content for the next innovation project. The challenges involve product/technological development, including the development of a new antenna booster and the integration of Variant™ in different open hardware platforms, to offer the dynamic and evolving world of smart and connected thing a disruptive solution. We stablished collaboration agreements with strong market players to validate and integrate our product. These collaborations will also let us disseminate Variant™ performance through conferences and workshops, increasing their presence in the IoT market and allowing NN reach a vast number of clients. We extensively evaluated our options for scaling up and distributing our future production. The commercial feasibility highlighted a large TAM and identified three main regions to be distributed and sold worldwide mainly by our commercial partners
Based on work completed to date, we identified the main challenges for the next stage of our product development that forms the content for the next innovation project. The challenges involve product/technological development, including the development of a new antenna booster and the integration of Variant™ in different open hardware platforms, to offer the dynamic and evolving world of smart and connected thing a disruptive solution. We stablished collaboration agreements with strong market players to validate and integrate our product. These collaborations will also let us disseminate Variant™ performance through conferences and workshops, increasing their presence in the IoT market and allowing NN reach a vast number of clients. We extensively evaluated our options for scaling up and distributing our future production. The commercial feasibility highlighted a large TAM and identified three main regions to be distributed and sold worldwide mainly by our commercial partners
"Variant™ technology is based on replacing a complex, less effective and usually customized antenna designs, which considerably increases costs and time-to-market, with an off-the-shelf and miniature component that replace conventional antennas for wireless connectivity applications. Due to its features, Variant™ meets the stringent requirements of open source hardware cards performing highly reliable wireless connectivity, that is a large part of any IoT device. Indeed, the solution can be effectively standardized across multiple Open Hardware Platforms, taking advantage of the benefits of this new model, while performing different features depending on the applications. The proposal has been specially thought to meet the new standards in connectivity and it becomes a radical step forward in the evolution of IoT engineering. The potential impact of this technology has been highlighted in multiple publications and has been named among the ""Ten Fascinating Things"" by the MIT Technology Review newsletter (March 2017) representing a real shift in the IoT sector with crucial economic impact on the entire industry"