Premo develops radio clock receiver antenna

Premo has developed antennas for atomic watch signal reception in a racing car built by Racetech for the Formula Student Germany racing event.

The antenna receives the radio signal from the Frankfurt station in real time; this signal is processed by the car electronics to get an accurate time value.

The multiple sensor measurement system of the vehicle is synchronised with the remote data logger using this signal.

There are several clock signal transmitters in different countries such as: DCF77-77.5kHz (Germany); HBG-75kHz (Switzerland); MSF-60kHz (UK); TDF-162kHz (France); JJY-40and60kHz (Japan); WWVB-60kHz (US); DCF49 (Germany) - 129.1 kHz (using remote control electric power distribution grids throughout Germany).

Premo has developed a radio clock receiver antenna in SMD technology (RCA-SMD series), for applications including automotive, outdoor lamp on/off control and more.

This component is supplied in reels to the automatic assembly process by an SMT pick-and-place machine.

In clock signal receiver circuits the antenna is a large component; Premo has miniaturised this antenna to enable the use of low-profile PCBs, with 100 per cent integration to avoid the need for manual external cable connection.

The antenna is delivered after being fine-tuned in Premo's factory, at a specified frequency.

This tuning process is completed using a reliable automatic station.

This station checks the antenna performance in real time.

These antennas are configured as L-C resonant parallel tank (RCA-SMD-77A: 1.3mH/3.3nF for 77.5 kHz and RCA-SMD-60A: 2.1mH/3.3nF for 60 kHz), which offer a higher resistance (more than 75kohms) at resonance frequency (+/- 0.2 kHz).

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