Ultrawideband Antenna Systems Embedded into a Load Bearing Wall for Connected Buildings

The importance of indoor mobile connectivity has increased during the last years, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. In contrast, new energy-efficient buildings contain structures like low-emissive widows and multi-layered thermal insulations which all block radio signals effectively. To solve this problem with indoor connectivity, we study passive antenna systems embedded in walls of low-energy buildings. We provide analytical models of a load bearing wall along with numerical and empirical evaluations of ultrawideband back-to-back antenna spiral antenna system in terms of electromagnetic- and thermal insulation. The antenna systems are optimized to operate well when embedded into load bearing walls. Unit cell models of the antenna embedded load bearing wall, which are called {\it signal-transmissive walls} in this paper, are developed to analyze their electromagnetic and thermal insulation properties. We show that our signal-transmissive wall improves the electromagnetic transmission compared to a raw load bearing wall over a wide bandwidth of 3-8 GHz, covering most of the new radio frequency range 1 (NR FR1), without compromising the thermal insulation capability of the wall demanded by the building regulation.