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Case Study: Xact Technology gets the right reception with Taoglas’ PA.25

Xact Technology, LLC, a DMC worldwide company, headquartered in New York is a provider of consumer electronics products. Xact Technology’s core product, XactTrax, is an integrated tracking solution, with GPS tracking, location-based services and machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. Xact customers use XactTrax to communicate with all manner of objects from tracking people and pets to vehicles or fleets, as well as asset or security applications.

 

Joe Jesson is Xact Technology’s CTO. He has worked on developing the XactTrax technology for many years making sure the technology meets the highest market standard for performance, accuracy and efficiency. Joe Jesson told us about the product, “XactTrax is a personal and OEM tracking platform that can be employed as a compact, high-quality telematics unit. It is a small system that’s GSM, GPRS-based with GPS so; fundamentally, it’s a tracking device. It was originally designed to support multiple verticals from personal tracking to commercial and enterprise applications. It’s perfect for asset monitoring and is reusable in thousands of applications.” The design incorporates a great deal of expansion capability so it can work perfectly as a stand alone device or as the core of a customized solution.

We are happy that we’ve chosen the best materials to meet the highest standards in the market. — Joe Jesson, CEO, Xact Technology

On the Right Track

“For this device we needed a high performance and highly sensitivity multiband band cellular antenna that would fit into the credit card sized device that we have. I didn’t want to use an antenna with unreliable connectors, I needed to embed the antenna right on a PCB and I needed better performance than you’d typically get from any ceramic loaded antenna in the market place.”

 

Joe Jesson looked at Taoglas’ PA-25a antenna. The PA-25a is the first six-band surface mount antenna (SMT) that delivers efficiency of 50% on all worldwide cellular bands including: 850 / 900 / 1700 / 1800 / 1900 and 2100 Mhz for GSM, CDMA, DCS, PCS, WCDMA, UMTS, HSDPA, GPRS and EDGE. Using the PA-25a and working with Taoglas RF engineers, XactTrack achieved TRP/TIS requirements and Radiated Spurious Emissions regulations to get PTCRB approval on their device. These standards are critical to business success in the North American wireless market.

Innovative Ceramic Design Makes the PA-25a a Winner

Jesson selected the PA-25a for his product. “We liked the idea that it was ceramic loaded because it helps miniaturize the size of the antenna.

 

But, ceramic antennas are notoriously brittle and you have to be careful to make sure they do not crack. However, this was not the case with the PA-25a, it was very robust. We started out using the PA-25a and performance testing told us that we made the right choice. The antenna gave superior performance even in areas of low coverage. We found it held GSM reception longer than other competitive antennas.”

 

Dermot O’Shea, Director of Taoglas, agreed that the PA-25a is a very unique antenna. “This antenna is the result of years of intensive research and development into high-grade ceramic formulas and getting lower cellular bands designed into small form factors – no other SMT antenna can match the PA-25a for the combination of size, durability, frequency range and efficiencies of over 50% on all bands. It’s been used in the field now in many different circumstances and the reports always come back positive.”

Great Performance from a Small Form Factor

One area companies have to be aware of when choosing antennas is passing PTCRB and network approvals. Jesson commented, “there were no changes required to the antenna design in order to pass the PTCRB – it passed first time. Now, it’s time to ship the product. We will be shipping the XactTrax all over the world and we are happy that we’ve chosen the best materials to meet the highest standards in the market.”

“This is the first product we’ve used from Taoglas so far, and we would certainly use them again for future products. The bottom line for me is that the Taoglas PA-25a antenna is a high performance antenna in a small scale that is perfect for the tracking market.”