The long propagation distance and limited antenna gain of smartphones and IoT devices create a challenging link budget. Large phased-array antennas, along with beamforming technologies, provide the high directivity gain needed to recover link margin while generating multiple steerable spot beams for geographic coverage and spectrum reuse.

Large arrays also require many RF channels. High-channel-density RF transceivers can significantly reduce component count, board area, and payload weight. Low power consumption per-channel becomes equally important because even small power savings are multiplied across hundreds or thousands of antenna elements.