Sofant to license antenna designs to global smart-phone manufacturers

Following seven years research and development at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, Sofant aims to license its antenna designs to global smart-phone manufacturers and is projecting a turnover of over £10 million in year five. The smart-phone market is now larger than the PC market with an estimated 5 billion units to be manufactured over the next five years, or 40 new phones every second. Sergio Tansini, CEO of Sofant, explains: "Antenna design has not kept pace with the rapid evolution of smart-phone technology. New communication protocols, such as LTE and 4G, mean more pressure than ever on existing antenna technology, impacting smart-phone performance and user experience." "Smart phone and tablet users expect to be able to make and take phone calls while browsing the web, send texts while downloading emails, and stream data while uploading videos to YouTube. The reality is that, until now, the antenna has acted as a bottleneck to performance in mobile devices. As a result, every new generation of smart phone performs less well than its predecessor, resulting in dropped calls, lost signals, weak connections, slow internet, and battery drain." The family of two designs comprise the tunable RF MEMS modules and Sofant Intelligent Software. The technologies can be licensed individually or as a single smart micro-antenna system. The company has already licensed an early technology demonstrator to a large OEM, attracting considerable interest from many leading manufacturers. Sofant has realised smart and software driven antenna and RF designs for mobile devices. The technology allows the antenna to be both miniaturized and intelligent through the power of SISTM (Sofant Intelligent Software), SGATM antenna designs, SUMTM switches and proprietary algorithms. Sofant's software enables reliable connections, lower RF-power consumption, and better signal quality, eliminating issues such as dead zones and weak signals. Sofant's AvtoRFTM products range allow smart and automatically tunable RF for mobile devices. Sofant targets various communication systems including WiFi, 3G, WiMAX, LTE, 4G, and MIMO. Sofant