"Mobile TV represents one of the greatest challenges for handset design today," said Josep Puig, Fractus Director, Mobile Handset Antennas. "Fractus provides the technical performance and the size reduction necessary to enable mobile TV in both existing form factors and completely new DVB-H/ISDB-H handset platforms."
Implementing mobile television in handsets raises major antenna design challenges including interference from overlapping frequencies including GSM and UMTS, and differing effects of users' hands and body positions on device performance when viewing the TV screen (usually towards the lap) or making phone calls (usually against the head) on mobile devices.
A problem with a traditional antenna design approach for low frequencies such as the 200MHz band is that the antenna required is longer than the handset. A recently launched UK mobile TV handset for example uses the headphone cable as the antenna, rendering the device useless without the headphones.
Fractus technology enables a fully customised antenna discretely housed within the handset, no matter what the mobile TV frequency.
For UHF and L-band, Fractus has a modular TVNow antenna that can be applied in existing handsets or new platforms enabling up to 25 per cent reductions in handset size compared to other antennas. The modular antenna is the only SMT (Surface Mounted Technology) design currently available and helps OEMs and ODMs reduce product development costs and time to market.