Non-Planar Controlled Reception Pattern Antennas for GPS Receivers

Performance of some non-planar Controlled Reception Pattern Antennas (CRPAs) to be used with GPS receivers is presented and compared with planar CRPAs. All antenna arrays investigated in this study have similar projected area (looking from the top). The performance metric is the output SINR and the available angular region over which the output SINR exceeds a selected SINR value. It is shown that the convex non-planar antenna arrays perform significantly better than planar as well as concave non-planar antenna arrays. In fact, concave non-planar antenna arrays do not perform as well as planar antenna arrays. This is true for simple null steering antenna electronics (AE) as well as for beam forming/null steering AE. Also, since non-planar antenna arrays have larger surface area, one can add more elements to these antenna arrays for further performance improvement.