NICT and VXB Aerospace Collaborate on Advanced Antenna Design for Wireless Positioning

The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) and VXB Aerospace have launched a collaborative research project on advanced antenna design for high-accuracy wireless positioning. Wireless positioning is expected to play an increasingly important role in indoor environments, factories, warehouses, infrastructure monitoring, robotics, and other applications where Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals are unavailable or unreliable. To improve the accuracy and practicality of such systems, antenna performance, size, and integration with wireless devices are critical technical factors.

By combining NICT’s expertise in antenna design, simulation, measurement, and evaluation with VXB Aerospace’s generative design technology, the collaboration aims to develop compact, high-performance antennas that contribute to improved wireless positioning accuracy and accelerate the practical deployment of indoor and infrastructure-oriented wireless positioning applications.

The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) is Japan’s national research and development agency for information and communications technologies. Through fundamental research and collaboration with industry and academia, NICT contributes to the development of next-generation ICT systems. The activity includes research on advanced wireless technologies and space-time standards.

VXB is headquartered in Los Angeles with an engineering presence in Sydney, where it was founded. VXB’s software designs complex advanced hardware compressing development that takes months or years into a matter of days or weeks, and hands engineers a buildable, manufacturer-ready design.

NICT has been conducting research and development on wireless time synchronization and wireless positioning technologies. In wireless positioning systems, antenna characteristics directly affect signal quality, propagation behavior, and positioning performance. Meanwhile, the miniaturization of antennas is important for practical deployment in compact wireless devices and sensor systems.

In this collaboration, NICT and VXB Aerospace will explore new antenna designs by combining simulation-driven and generative design approaches with experimental antenna evaluation. The research will focus on improving positioning accuracy while reducing antenna size, with the goal of contributing to robust wireless positioning in environments where conventional positioning technologies face limitations.