Taiyo Yuden is not only engaged in sales of high-frequency products such as compact chip antennas, high-frequency multilayer chip filters, and Bluetooth® modules, it also possesses technologies for antenna evaluations in the anechoic chamber, and for Bluetooth® qualification tests and other high-frequency evaluations, enabling the company to take a comprehensive approach incorporating materials, design, and process technologies. This latest product is also a combination of these advanced Taiyo Yuden technologies, to achieve the industry’s thinnest 2.4GHz chip antenna, at just 0.5mm.
Mass production of this product is to begin at the Tamamura Plant (in Tamamura-machi, Sawa-gun, Gunma Prefecture) in October 2008, at a pace of 3 million units per month. The sample price is 200 yen per unit.
As mobile phones become more multi-functional, the conventional voice communication has come to be joined by GPS, camera, digital mobile TV reception, email, wireless connectivity, and many other functions, all folded into a small chassis. As a result, there is strong pressure on making the parts that achieve these various functions thinner and more compact. In the wireless area, Bluetooth® and wireless LAN utilizing the 2.4GHz frequency band are now about to be joined by ZigBee®, a close proximity, low-power consumption network, and which is expected to jumpstart the spread of wireless communication to mobile phones.
While Taiyo Yuden had previously offered the compact chip antenna AF 216M245001 (2.5 x 1.6 x 1.6mm) for wireless communication equipment using the 2.4GHz band, demand for even thinner, more compact units led the company to use its advanced design technology to optimize elements, and its high-frequency parts and materials technology to develop the chip antenna, and achieve a product with a low profile of 0.5mm while also maintaining characteristics performance. The company aims to further develop this technology, toward development and commercialization of compact, thin antennas suitable for GPS and all other wireless standards