Group led by CEA Leti working on electrically-small super directional antennas

Date: 15/07/2013
The project called SOCRATE involving CEA Leti is aimed at developing super directional antennas which are electrically small. The present application examples of such omnidirectional antennas includes RFID, wireless telemetry, home automation and any such low-power wireless applications.

The SOCRATE group working on developing innovative concepts to improve the directivity of electrically small antennas. If the directivity of these antennas are improved, they can be used for a lot more new applications other than what is mentioned above, by improving factors such as spectral efficiency and environmental impact . The partners working on this project are exploring how a high degree of miniaturization of the infrastructure can provide new mainstream applications, such as industrial and home automation, as well as wireless sensor networks. The SOCRATE project is looking at the fundamental limits of radiation of compact antennas.

The SOCRATE projects includes IETR, a French umbrella organization for researchers in the electronics and telecommunications sectors. Both have proven expertise in miniature antennas and electromagnetic wave propagation. It also includes two industrial partners that are developing innovative applications requiring compact antenna directivity with UHF frequencies: Movea, leading provider of data-fusion and motion-processing technologies for consumer electronics, and TAGSYS, the leading provider of RFID-based item-level inventory management systems.

The three-year project, initiated by CEA Leti, to build two demonstrators to illustrate how super-directivity of miniature antennas could lead to the development of new applications in object designation and tracking. Movea’s interests in the project include object designation with a universal wireless remote controller.