Magnetics Business & Technology - September/October 2020 - 8

FEATURE ARTICLE

Highly Permeable Ferrite Enables 3D Cube Antennas from Neosid for 6DoF Tracking

Applying its expertise with highly permeable ferrite material,
Neosid has developed innovative new isotropic 3D antennas for
electromagnetic tracking systems in devices for various industries such as gaming, logistics, maintenance, and medicine.
Using a transmitting antenna, shown on the left, and a receiving
antenna, shown on the right, the systems can accomplish six
directions of accuracy making them suitable for advanced virtual
reality tracking by collecting information on the position of an
object in three-dimensional space.
"These antennas result from a combination of our expertise in
the development and manufacturing of customized ferrites by injection molding as well as of electronic components," said Yilmaz
Benzer, managing director. "Providing virtual information for
technology of the future, they are increasingly being used to collect information on the position of an abject in three-dimensional
space. They use the data acquired to add virtual information to
processes."
One of the company's innovations is its use of a highly permeable ferrite material with a specific resistance of approx. 106 to
107 mΩ. This allows direct winding without an insulating coating.
Components made of the material are highly versatile and can
be used in RF, antenna and interference suppression technology as well as for proximity switches, transponders and other
electronic components.

Antenna Core
The systems are based upon ferrite core antennas. The three
coils on the antenna are oriented at right angles to each other.
The cube shape of the antenna offers isotropic properties during
transmission and reception in the x-, y-, and z-axes.
"We utilize a special manufacturing process to form modern
ferrite materials into any required three-dimensional shape,"
explains Benzer. "We use this to create a hollow ferrite core for
our 3D cube antennas. Compared to a solid ferrite core, this significantly reduces the weight of the component -while retaining
the efficiency of the antenna. Our one-piece antenna cores offer
the greatest degree of resistance against mechanical influences
because we keep the number of components used low."-thereby
also doing our part for a sustainable environment.
Alternatively, Neosid also designs isotropic antennas without a
ferrite core which are made of three air-core coils put together.
This design variant is particularly important for applications in
which magnetic materials are not to be used, such as in certain
medical systems.
"Our proficiency in advanced manufacturing methods allows us
to design 3D cube antennas such that they can be manufactured
optimally in an automated production process," notes Benzer.
Metallized areas on the ferrite core serve as contact surfaces
for the individual windings as well as for contacting the entire
component on the circuit board.
The process-optimized ferrite core makes it possible to automatically wind the antenna. The wire thickness, number of windings,
and winding position can be individually adapted to the requirements of the application, and the coil wire can be attached reliably to the component.

Many positioning systems rely on GPS navigation where two
coordinates define the position in a plane. For the description of
the object height, an additional piece of information is needed
to yield 3D data. If this data is supplemented with information
on the orientation of the object, the result is 6 directions which
describe the freedom of movement of an object in three-dimensional space, referred to as 6 degrees of freedom (6DoF).

Magnetics Business & Technology * September/October 2020

Vertical integration at Neosid is an important factor. The design,
the creation of the production tools and the manufacturing of the
ferrite cores for the antennas take place in Germany. Modern,
robot-controlled production equipment is used for the winding
processes and the company exercises continuous quality control
and advanced production methods along the entire manufacturing process.
Advantages of Magnetic Sensor Systems
Magnetic sensor systems have several advantages over corresponding methods such as camera-based optical or mechanical systems using gyroscopes or gyrostats, explains Benzer. For

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