Meet World’s Smallest Antenna – for Critical Applications

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The world’s smallest Iridium antenna will provide new capabilities to mobile handsets, wearable trackers, and personal safety devices as well as for vehicles, marine craft and aircraft, and for critical infrastructure applications.

The Iridium satellite constellation provides communications between any two points on earth through a satellite array. Satellite voice and data communications are not only critical safety measures for maintaining communications in remote areas or places where cellular communications are unviable, but they also open new possibilities for IoT applications. 

The Iridium antenna series unveiled by Helix Geospace can operate safely near the human head with minimal performance degradation, discriminating true satellite signals from multi-path signals, interference, and jamming while delivering high performance in a compact and rugged form factor.

IoT is driving increased demand for short burst data over the Iridium satellite network, with applications including logistics and asset tracking, and monitoring of critical infrastructure and transportation links. 

At only 37mm long and 13.5mm diameter, the HXDC1600 antenna family is the smallest available antenna that meets the Iridium satellite data network’s voice and short-burst data (SBD) requirements. Using Helix’s proprietary Dielectrix technology, the new Iridium antenna will enable satellite phones to be built at close to the size and cost of a normal cellular mobile phone, according to geospatialworld.net.