Mobile terminal GPS antennas in multipath environment and effects of human body presence

Electromagnetic waves transmitted by GPS satellite arriving at a GPS mobile terminal antenna undergo reflection, diffraction and scattering from various environmental objects in the vicinity. It results in the formation of a multipath arrival of the wave at the receiving mobile terminal antenna. The traditional approaches to analyse the antenna performance are therefore, not capable to describe the performance of the GPS antenna efficiently in the multipath environment. A new technique to characterise these environmental effects on the GPS antenna was presented and verified. Human body is the integral part of mobile terminal applications and its degrading effects are well established. This paper extends the study to investigate the effects of the presence of the human body in the proximity of the GPS mobile terminal antennas working in the multipath environment.