A Vibration Resistant GNSS Antenna with Reduced Size and Weight for Wideband Satellite Applications

This paper presents a low profile, lightweight and wideband GNSS antenna implementation whose structural design is strengthened to withstand the vibration arisen from space launch vehicles. The proposed antenna mainly aims to meet all functional and physical requirements to cover the frequency bands of all known navigation satellite constellations (1.164-1.610 GHz) with minimized weight in a limited volume on the satellite platform. In accordance with this purpose, a right-hand circularly polarized crossed bowtie dipole antenna is designed, fabricated and measured. Although miniaturization of antennas is known to decrease operational bandwidth, the measurement results showing a good agreement with the simulation results indicate that the presented antenna covers all GNSS frequency bands with a satisfactory performance. The manufactured antenna is also exposed to vibration tests and the measured functional performance of the antenna after test is quite consistent with initial state.