A Study of Geometry and Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Antennas for Controlled Reception Pattern Antenna (CRPA) Arrays

Yu-Hsuan Chen

Abstract:	Controlled Reception Pattern Antenna array (CRPA) is an effective approach for rejecting interference and enhancing the received GNSS signal power. Conventionally, the antenna array used for CRPA is designed for reducing imbalance between elements. Additionally, full calibration should be made for calculating the spacing between elements and the cabling latency before performing CRPA. Hence, the high cost and complex calibration of antenna arrays decrease the attractiveness of CRPA to many user communities. We develop an approach which can perform CRPA without any prior information. Specifically, inexpensive and Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) antennas can be used as elements of an antenna array. This allows the elements to be easily arranged to any desired array layout. With this new freedom in array geometry, the important issue of its effect on performance is raised. As the characteristics of antenna and array layout will affect the anti-interference performance, it is important to study the effect of antenna array geometry and select the best units/layouts combination. In this study, we examined both COTS antenna use and the effect of array geometry by assessing three models of commercial antennas and arranging these in two selected layouts. The antenna patterns of two physical layouts are analyzed in terms of beamwidth and illustrated. Signal collection hardware is built to record the data sets of antenna array. A positioning procedure of calculating electrical layout is developed using differential carrier phase measurements. We collected data sets for each antenna/layout combination. And, these data sets are processed by our software receiver to log the carrier phase measurements. The electrical layouts determined from the positioning procedure are compared with physical ones for examining the mutual coupling effects on the antenna array. From these results, we can assess the array layouts and the COTS antennas
Published in:	Proceedings of the 25th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2012) September 17 - 21, 2012 Nashville Convention Center, Nashville, Tennessee Nashville, TN
Pages:	907 - 914
Cite this article:	Chen, Yu-Hsuan, "A Study of Geometry and Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Antennas for Controlled Reception Pattern Antenna (CRPA) Arrays," Proceedings of the 25th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2012), Nashville, TN, September 2012, pp. 907-914.
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