Our antenna design philosophySkyCross tailors antennas to customers’ industrial designs and applications—not forcing the customer into using a particular antenna design. We look at the whole device implementation and performance requirement, work in collaboration with customer design teams, and provide early feedback on potential concerns.
Getting startedSkyCross has experience working with leading device manufacturers on hundreds of projects. We start by evaluating our customers’ needs. After carefully reviewing the electrical/mechanical specifications, target timelines, and budget requirements, we can suggest an appropriate action plan.
Projects usually fall into one of the following categories:
- Fully custom design: Projects in this category have unique needs. The frequency, size, and performance requirements tend to be specific to the device.
- Derivative of existing design: SkyCross has an extensive portfolio of antenna designs. Devices with common shapes and sizes, such as PC cards and USB dongles, can often use similar
antennas. Customers may find a part on our website that looks nearly compatible and would like minor modifications.
- No design modifications necessary: Although more unusual, there are instances where an existing design can work in a device without any modifications. In this instance, SkyCross can help choose an antenna location and optimize the performance.
Based on the project needs, SkyCross assigns a local design team to work with the customer and to prepare a development schedule.
Typical design process
Some of these steps may be skipped or abridged depending on the category above.
- Feasibility/placement recommendations: RF systems experts at SkyCross review the device design and make recommendations regarding antenna placement and size/performance tradeoffs. Early antenna planning reduces potential for problems later in the design cycle.
- Simulations: Once device design begins to materialize, SkyCross uses CAD (computer-aided design) drawings or physical device prototypes provided by the customer to prepare simulation data. During this step, customers can begin to see what
level of antenna performance can be achieved at particular sizes and configurations.
- Hand-made prototypes: After successfully preparing simulations, we are ready to build hand made prototypes in the lab and test them in the device. This step may take several iterations to determine the optimal solution. When the fine-tuning is complete, we provide an interface control document (ICD) to the customer for approval before proceeding.
- Soft and Hard Tooled prototypes: In this stage, prototypes are built and tested in the device. Our mechanical engineers carefully review these parts to ensure manufacturing tolerances are met and parts can be produced without issues.
- Production: Our support does not stop at when the design is complete. In fact, our core business is providing volume production units to our customers. We use a combination of outside suppliers and in-house production to offer high quality units. See our manufacturing page for details.
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