The development of a multi-port, multi-band pre-production Prototype antenna system Demonstrator ("PD") for the smart phone market

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Smart Antenna Technologies (“SAT”), a spin off from University of Birmingham in 2013, isresearching and developing the next generation of smart multiband, multi-functional, multiportcompact configurable antenna systems for laptops, tablets, smart phones, automotiveapplications and other mobile/portable devices. Thus, the aim of this project is to develop abench Prototype Demonstrator (“PD”) to meet the current and future demands of the smartphone market. These patented new antenna systems reduce the number of antennas fromseveral (typically seven in a modern smart phone) to just a single miniaturised antennasystem, allowing WiFi, Bluetooth, 4G and GPS to all run concurrently (see appendix A),therefore considerably reducing costs, power usage, and materials, size/space used. Inaddition, it has significantly enhanced performance over existing antennas covering allfrequencies between 400MHz and 6GHz and it also supports the new and emerging 4G LongTerm Evolution (LTE) market increasing the phone life. There is substantial interest in theSAT technology and capabilities from some of the top OEMs in these markets, but while SATis keen to exploit as many of these as it can, it does not have the resources to follow all theseopportunities. SAT has considerable experience in fabrication a PD as it is currently workingwith a global laptop manufacturer and a global chip design/manufacturer developing a laptopantenna systems for them. With additional resources it could also be exploiting theconsiderably larger smart phone market while it has the technological lead over others.If successful, SAT would immediately employ 3 additional engineers, and by 2020 thereshould be at least an additional 20 to 25 new jobs created in SAT. It is anticipated that theproject to make one PD for just one phone will require approximately £624k of funding intotal and will last approximately 21 months from early 2016