Antennas & Propagation

We will design and build antennas for your unique business requirements.

An investment in 3D electromagnetic field solvers, together with years of practical experience allows us to rapidly design custom antenna solutions in any useful frequency band for our clients. Our recent work at mm-wave frequency is underpinned by an ability to model structures accurately and employ advanced fabrication methods.

Key Skills

  • Antenna design, antenna modelling, antenna manufacture
  • HF, VHF, UHF, microwave frequencies, mm-wave frequencies, narrowband, wideband
  • Electrically small antennas, electrically large antennas
  • Monopole, dipole, loop, patch antenna, slot antenna, planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA), horn antenna, tapered-slot (Vivaldi) antenna
  • Electronic scanning, phased arrays, frequency scanning, leaky wave
  • Waveguide, substrate integrated waveguide (SIW), microstrip
  • 3D electromagnetic simulation, finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method, Method of Moments (MoM)
  • Ground wave, surface wave, ionospheric propagation, tropospheric propagation, urban and suburban propagation, cellular propagation, indoor propagation, two-ray propagation, ground reflection coefficient
  • Polarisation, linear, elliptical, circular, vertical, horizontal, right-hand, left-hand, RHCP, LHCP
  • Radio noise, radio noise measurement, radio noise modelling, radio noise analysis

James Henderson

Senior Consultant, Antennas & Propagation

“Although sometimes overlooked, antennas are a key component in any radio system and often need to be individually designed for each application. Whatever its specific requirements, each design has to work with the complete product; this means every design has a unique set of challenges.

I’ve always enjoyed new challenges, and this has given me a particular interest in the field of antennas and propagation.”

James Henderson, Plextek
Projects

mm-Wave Radar System

dual head antenna, sample of expertise

Plextek has been working at mm-wave frequencies (above 30 GHz) for some years now. At these extremely high frequencies (EHF), systems often require highly directional antennas that have narrow beamwidths and can be manufactured in a cost-effective manner.

In this project, the antenna forms part of a radar system operating at 60 GHz and the design was taken from initial concept through detailed system performance and design calculations to an integrated, highly manufacturable, single-board radar sensor in just a few months.

The novel antenna for the mm-wave radar incorporates Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) technology within a multi-layer, low-loss, microwave laminate. This method involves using the PCB itself to create an enclosed transmission line that can be implemented on the same microwave laminate as the radar transceiver circuitry, thereby yielding a compact design that makes best use of the PCB area.

Vehicle Asset Management

Vehicle Asset Management System (VAM) products enable efficient management of vehicular fleets (e.g. fleets, emergency services and heavy equipment/machinery) and offer driver-behaviour monitoring for the vehicle insurance markets.

In 2015, Plextek Ltd formally spun out Redtail Telematics, which provides turnkey vehicle telematics services to the fleet management and automotive insurance markets. Since 1993, Redtail have shipped more than six million tracking devices into line fit and aftermarket vehicles for stolen vehicle recovery. Redtail’s expertise in working collaboratively to answer challenging questions directs our efforts in working with OEMs to fulfil the potential of the connected vehicle, from line fit vehicle tracking with Mercedes Benz, through golf-cart battery health with Columbia Vehicle, to pothole detection with Jaguar Land Rover & Synaptiv.

Kenobi, Vehicle asset management

Downloads and White Papers

5MHz Propagation Predictions

Comparison of propagation predictions and measurements
for midlatitude HF near-vertical incidence sky wave
links at 5 MHz

Get In Touch

Let us know what’s on your mind and someone will reply as soon as possible.

=