PCB Antenna for GPS

[aquaregia]

I have a system with a Lassen IQ GPS, and I'd like to make an antenna on the PCB. I've been looking at some small lug antennas and some traces on the PCB. I have almost no background in anything remotely wireless, so I'm mostly looking for some general information at this point. Links, articles, books etc.
Thanks for you time on the vague question
Andrew

 

[AlWingy]

GPS wise you may wise to look at what sarantel do, a nice small company in UK which do miniaturised antennas.

http://www.sarantel.com

On that site you'll find technical papers which point out many of the pitfalls that you need to look out for. If you have bluetooth also on your board then you'll be opening up pandoras box, and will deffinitely require a filter response antenna. Rather than design your own it's best to get an antenna in and take into account all the relative pitfalls that you face.
Anyway if you do go ahead then make sure your antenna is balanced, has a filter response, doesn't require a ground plane otherwise your performance will be affected by the size of future generations. Have proper shielding. Careful of biological loading especially with GPS........ all depends on your application to what you may or may not get away with.
Book-wise i suppose you could go for mobile antenna systems handbook by Jimmy James....... if you need more advise then just shout.

 

[Higgler]

I looked at the GPS unit, if I saw the correct one, it has its' own aluminum case with a connector for the antennna. Do you want to make an antenna on a separate PCB to mount atop this unit? If so, the options for antennas will be guided by how you want to position is?
1) directly atop the GPS receiver
2) remotely with cable attached
3) off the enf of your receiver


GPS frequency is 1.575 Ghz, and it's wavelength is 11.803"/1.575 = 7.494 inches, patch antennas in air are half wavelength or 4 inches long x width(slightly smaller than the length, any thickness works, I'd suggest 2".

So what do you want your antenna to look like?
kch
(antenna engineer)

 

[atterberry]

Hey, I have a lassen sk8 GPS receiver module and I want to build instead of buy an antenna for it. I was wondering if this is even possible, and would greatly appreciate any feedback.

Thank you,
Woody

 

[leonar40]

There is a company called Toyon that has been designing a small (3in. x 1in.) pair of GPS patch antennas for a defense project. I can tell you that it's not an easy thing to do. They have many more problems to worry about than you would, such as aero-heating, mechanical shock survivability, etc. But it still won't be easy. My suggestion would be to just buy a small patch type antenna. I can almost guarantee that you could buy one for less than it would cost you to make one once you factor in all the time that you would spend getting it to work.

 

[SolderingGunslinger]

There was an article in QST magazine's October, 2002 edition covering a home-brew GPS antenna. It wasn't a PCB antenna, but it did use pieces of Printed Circuit Board for the stripline match and the elements.

I remain,

The Old Soldering Gunslinger