Taoglas CEO pushing to shorten IoT design cycle and get customers ‘to market on time, the first time’
The growing understanding and popularity of Internet of Things (IoT) solutions has led to exceptional growth for antenna and IoT solution provider Taoglas. Co-founder and joint CEO Dermot O’Shea told RCR Wireless News at Mobile World Congress Los Angeles that all areas of the company’s business — antenna, RF and OEM IoT — are accelerating.
“We’ve been growing […] every year by 20% plus,” he said, “and we see that growth continuing as IoT continues to be more popular.”
A recent acquisition of smart waste company Smart Sensor is emblematic of this growth and fits nicely into the company’s smart cities play, which O’Shea said is an area in which the company has been active for more than 17 years.
“With our experience, we can solve very complex problems in IoT — anything with vision, anything with smart city or waste — and we’re developing more and more solutions in that area,” he commented.
It’s not only the IoT space that O’Shea described as “complex,” however. According to him, as more devices come into play, so do more antennas. Further, technologies like MIMO for cellular applications make it so that devices require more antennas than they used to.
“The beautiful thing about antennas,” he shared, “is that there are more devices [and there are] also more antennas required on those devices. For cellular, […] we’ve gone from two or four to eight antennas on some routers, and with Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi 6, we see the same.”
He added that because Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), which are constellations of satellites that provide signals from space that transmit positioning and timing data to receivers, require multi-band antenna systems, they are uniquely challenging and complex.
He said that in venues, particularly temporary venues, IoT solutions supported by 5G can be used to deliver the additional capacity that a network might be required during the influx of connected devices you might expect to see during events like sports games, concerts or trade shows.
“There’s an insatiable appetite from certain applications for more throughput, more speed and instant connectivity,” he continued, adding that the company is already seeing the 5G opportunity in such instances, but also expects IoT on 5G to enter the broader market, simply because networks will need more capacity.
According to O’Shea, beyond continuing to grow each of its business areas, Taoglas is dedicated to shortening the IoT solution design cycle and reducing certification and user interface delays, so that its customers “get to market on time, the first time.”
