JCA044 surface-mount high-gain GPS antenna

Glyn has released the JCA044 surface-mount, high-gain GPS antenna, claimed to be the smallest active quadrifilar helix GPS antenna and providing high performance in difficult GPS applications.

The device integrates a high-performance, high-gain, low-noise amplifier and is an active antenna suitable for applications where: the device is handheld, body-worn, or otherwise surrounded by high-dielectric materials that would de-tune conventional antennas; the antenna is tightly integrated with other antennas, eg, Bluetooth/GPS receivers or GPS/GSM mobile phones; there are tight constraints on the size of the device or the space allocated to ground planes; the GPS receiver requires 20 dB or more of input pre-amplification; the orientation of the device is random; the antenna will be embedded in the device.

The antenna is balanced, which isolates it and enables it to reject common mode noise resident on the device ground plane. The construction and materials of the antenna constrain its near-field to a very small volume, so materials near the antenna have negligible de-tuning effects and the antenna maintains its pattern and efficiency in dielectric loading.

As a dielectrically-loaded antenna with a SAW filter, the antenna effectively attenuates signals from common GSM and ISM frequencies by up to 30 dB, minimising the need for additional filtering.