Meet Kymeta, The Company That Could Bring High Speed Wi-fi To Cars
Designed to bring Wi-Fi to cars, planes, and boats, the mTenna is a patented, lightweight, low-power, flat-panel antenna that can communicate with satellites in order to provide internet to consumers.
The company says its unique technology can maintain satellite communication on-the-go. Attachable to virtually anything that moves, the mTenna can provide internet access anywhere in the world; including your car, your next flight, or on a cruise ship in the middle of nowhere.
While it may look different, the Kymeta antenna is performing essentially the same function as a satellite dish (which is also an antenna) that you’d see on the roof of a house.
The difference here is that the standard satellite dish can be thought of as a “dumb” antenna. It just points at one area in the sky and doesn’t move. Kymeta’s antenna has no moving parts, but can communicate with satellites across the entire sky.
It relies on software to electronically acquire signals from satellites. The Kymeta antenna’s simplicity and size (it’s about the size of a large pizza) makes it possible to include the technology on vehicles where size and weight are important.
“What we’re doing with antenna technology is completely transformative to the way people communicate” –
If Kymeta’s mTenna can be perfected, it will be a radical improvement over existing technologies.
For example, United uses an antenna created by Panasonic which can also communicate with satellites, but is thicker and larger than the mTenna and is controlled by motors that move the antenna around to catch a satellite signal.
Read more at Tech Crunch
