At Custom Antennas Australia, we do one thing and we do it very well—custom antenna design to optimise the RF performance of IoT equipment. Rather than designing antenna matching circuits or using a one-size-fits-all antenna, we match and tune our antennas to your device, and its installed environment; the resulting performance increase will blow you away. We are so confident in our antennas and our design service, that if we cannot significantly improve the RF performance of your device, we will give you a full refund.​​
Custom Antenna Design
Increase your product's performance or get your money back!
Give me some context?
How can we help? CAA has developed a proprietary antenna that can easily be matched and tuned across a wide gamut. We will custom design, tune, and match the antenna to your device, and you will be amazed at the increase in performance that you will see.
​
The traditional antenna-matching process takes an off-the-shelf antenna and matches the device to the antenna by designing an antenna-matching circuit. This process takes specialized knowledge and equipment to be done correctly. More importantly, the process must be repeated whenever there is a change to the electronics or the device. Furthermore, you may not have control over where or how your customers install your product; you might even want to provide remote antenna installation options, so you might need several matching circuits for various product applications. Maintaining several matching circuit designs for multiple applications of each product becomes very expensive and challenging.
We have the knowledge and equipment required to design matching circuits. However, we believe this is a low-value proposition, especially for clients who are not yet building hundreds of thousands of units or for devices that will experience a wide range of use cases.
​
Instead, we apply a different design philosophy, usually reserved for multi-billion dollar companies. Instead of matching devices to antennas, we match antennas to devices through custom antenna design.
"instead of matching devices to antennas, we match antennas to devices."
​
Custom Antennas Vs Custom Matching
Let's take a quick look at the pros and cons of matching electronics to antennas and matching antennas to electronics starting with the traditional method of matching the device to the antenna.
​
Benefits of matching the device to an antenna
-
An off-the-shelf antenna can be used, allowing flexibility to the shape, design, and characteristics of the antenna (provided the desired antenna exists)
-
A good match for a specific arrangement can usually be found
-
Once matched, mass production is simple.
Matching the device to the antennas results in multiple PCBs or a one-size-fits-all compromise.
​
-
The matching process must be integrated with the PCB manufacturing process
-
There is rarely a sufficient opportunity to test thoroughly between the first run, matching, mass production
-
Matching is often only done for a specific arrangement/installation
-
Matching is usually an expensive specialist service.
-
Different arrangements/installations might exhibit very poor performance
-
Maintaining a wide variety of matched PCB designs is cumbersome
-
Producing several smaller PCBA batches increases your per-unit cost
-
Matching errors can be costly
-
Devices become delegated for a specific arrangement and can’t be moved to a different arrangement by the customer.
Of course, in practice, maintaining different designs for specific installation arrangements is rarely done for the many reasons listed here. A one-size-fits-all match is usually employed; the result is that many IoT devices perform sub-optimally in their installed arrangement. Clear installation instructions can partially mitigate this, but you never know what your customers will do. The IoT industry is plagued with underperforming devices (link), but the simple reality is that this can easily be fixed.
​
Problems with matching the device to the antenna
​
-
Custom antenna design is easier than matching circuit design.
-
Optimising for various installations and arrangements is practicable
-
Only one PCB design is needed, resulting in cheaper PCBA and no mistakes
-
Devices can be moved from one installation to another and maintain optimisation just by changing the antenna
-
Fewer compromises lead to much better performance.
-
Reach mass production much earlier in the design cycle.
-
We maintain the antenna definitions and their use cases for you so that we can always supply the best antenna for your customer's application.
-
We often see more than 10dB real-world improvements in RSSI, In fact we have seen more than 30dB of improvement on some LoRa devices.​
Benefits of matching the antenna to the device
Matching the antenna to the device results in multiple antennas but only one PCB design, antennas can be application-specific and easy to manage.
Problems with matching the antenna to the device
-
We currently only offer one style and one radiation pattern
What do CAA do differently?
At CAA we will tailor the antenna to your device and its use case (or installation arrangements). By matching the antenna to the device rather than the device to the antenna, we maximise the value provided to your product and company.
​
We can tailor several antenna designs for different arrangements of each product. For example, we can design a remote-mounted and direct-mounted antenna for your product, or we could make custom antennas for vertically mounted, horizontally mounted and buried applications.
​
We store your antenna design parameters in our product database so that we can supply high-quality, custom, Australian-made antennas for your product at any time.
​
We are so confident that we can add value to your product that we have a money-back guarantee. If we can't provide a 3dB improvement in our field transmission transmission tests, we will offer a full refund. We have felt the pain of being ripped off by this type of service and want to spare you from that pain.
​
We design the antenna in the cleanroom, but then we go outside and test the antenna in the real world. It is not unusual for us to be digging holes, installing posts, welding enclosures or building makeshift structures to recreate your customer's installation environment as accurately as possible.
How Does it work?
03.
Send hardware
Send us 2-units of your product (one can/should be missing the transceiver) and one of your existing antennas.
We use the first unit to design the antenna
We use the second unit to test the performance of the custom antenna, and assess the performance compared to your old antenna.
​
04.
Test, Develop, Report
we will design a custom antenna for your device, optimised for the specific installation arrangement which you have described to us.
Once tested, if we succeed with improving the performance (against our +3dB benchmark test) we will write a test report, specify your custom antenna with a model number and send you 2 sample antennas.
​
If we fail to meet our +3dB benchmark. you can choose either a full refund or a test report, recommended device improvements and 2 sample antennas.
05.
Order antennas
Your antenna will have its own model number and we store the specification and moulds to build your antenna. you can order any quantitiy of antenna at any time.
How Much Does it Cost?
$5000 for the first antenna design (for one installation arrangement)
​
$2500 for each additional design (for different arrangements of the same product)
$35 per antenna (discounts are provided for large orders)
​
Free if we can not improve the output by 3dB
​
Why Choose CAA?
We offer an extremely simple, fast, cheap, and effective service.
We are the only company in the world to offer our unique antenna.
We expect to make significant improvements to your product's RF performance.
If we don't provide significant improvements, then the service is free
You have nothing to lose!
​
​
Points to note
-
The general form of our antenna is proprietary; we are supplying a matched and tuned instantiation of the design. Unfortunately, we can not give you the rights to reproduce the antenna design without licensing.
-
We care about Startups and want you to succeed; we can offer you the right to reproduce the antenna with the exact dimensions that were tuned for your device/application for a reasonable fee. We offer you this so that you are not stuck with us as a supplier (though we strongly encourage you to stick with us as a supplier)
-
The radiation pattern of our proprietary antenna is roughly toroidal and omnidirectional in the X and Y axes.
-
We provide genuine performance improvements by matching the antenna to the device, not by providing a high-gain or unidirectional antenna or some other kind of trick.
-
This service aims to be mutually beneficial for startups and SMEs. We aim to bring significant value to you for very little cost (compared to your other options).
-
Your feedback is important to us, we operate under the philosophy of All Shall Prosper, so if you are not satisfied with our services then neither are we.
Our Antenna
We don’t like to publicise the inner workings of our antenna, but here is what you need to know:
-
The design is small, simple, cost-effective and inexpensive.
-
We have good control of the capacitance and inductance independent of the centre frequency.
-
This allows us to match the antenna to a wide range (not all) of devices with centre frequency in the UHF/VHF range, especially between 100MHz and 1GHz.
-
The antenna is circularly polarized and ideal for many IOT applications, including many LEO satellite and linearly polarised applications.
-
Our enclosure is waterproof, UV resistant and heat resistant, designed to handle the realities of Australia’s outback, including bushfires.
-
Our antennas typically have a male SMA connector.
-
The antenna comes with a 3-year warranty
-
Due to the relatively small quantities of each design that we develop, we do not parameterise the gain or radiation pattern. We can offer this service through a third party if required.
-
We take great joy in hearing stories from our customers like one customer, whose devices now operate with 12dB of headroom in locations that used to have insufficient network coverage for successful transmission.
