Antenna band-switching evaluation board speeds time to market for IoT and handheld devices

The new antenna band switching evaluation board from KYOCERA AVX makes it quick and easy to test antenna performance in designs for handheld consumer electronics, IoT devices, and industrial machine-to-machine applications. 

The 1004795-EC646-01 board enables engineers to reduce the number of design iterations, improve accuracy, and speed time-to-market for smaller applications operating at low frequencies in the range 698 MHz to 960 MHz, or at higher frequencies of 1.71 GHz to 2.17 GHz. Using the board, it is simple to optimize antenna size, performance, and emissions and to meet design and regulatory requirements. 

The evaluation board measures 45.5 mm x 60 mm, which means that it fits easily in designs for many IoT or handheld devices. The board can be trimmed down or extended with copper tape to better match the physical size of test devices if required. 

The board includes the 1004795 universal broadband FR4 embedded antenna, an Ether Switch & Tune™ chipset for band switching, a battery holder to power the switch, and a female SMA connector. 

The device supports cellular network services including broadband LTE, 4G/5G, LTE CAT‑M, NB‑IoT, and cellular low-power wide-area networks.