SL876Q5-A
Product User Guide
1VV0301333 Rev. 2
Page 48 of 68
2017-06-27
general direction, the geometry of the remaining satellites will result is a lower position
accuracy. The receiver reports this geometry effect in the form of PDOP, HDOP and VDOP
numbers.
For example, in a vehicular application, the GNSS antenna may be placed on the dashboard
or rear package tray of an automobile. The metal roof of the vehicle will cause significant
blockage, plus any thermal coating applied to the vehicle glass can attenuate the GNSS signal
by as much as 15 dB. Again, both of these factors will affect the performance of the receiver.
Multipath interference is a phenomena where the signal from a particular satellite is reflected
and is received by the GNSS antenna in addition to or in place of the line of sight signal. The
reflected signal has a path length that is longer than the line of sight path and can either
attenuate the original signal, or, if received in place of the original signal, can add error in
determining a solution because the distance to the particular satellite is actually shorter than
measured. It is this phenomenon that makes GNSS navigation in urban canyons (narrow roads
surrounded by high rise buildings) so challenging. In general, the reflection of a GNSS signal
causes the polarization to reverse. The implications of this are covered in the next section.
GNSS Antenna Polarization
The GPS broadcast signal is Right Hand Circularly Polarized (RHCP).
An RHCP antenna will have 3 dB gain compared to a linearly-polarized antenna (assuming the
same antenna gain specified in dBic and dBi respectively).
An RHCP antenna is better at rejecting multipath interference than a linearly polarized antenna
because the reflected signal changes polarization to LHCP. This signal would be rejected by
the RHCP antenna, typically by 20 dB or greater.
If the multipath signal is attenuating the line of sight signal, then the RHCP antenna would
show a higher signal level than a linearly polarized antenna because the interfering signal is
rejected.
However, in the case where the multipath signal is replacing the line of sight signal, such as in
an urban canyon environment, then the number of satellites in view could drop below the
minimum needed to determine a 3D position. This is a case where a bad signal may be better
than no signal. The system designer needs to understand trade-offs in their application to
determine the better choice.
Active versus Passive Antenna
If the GNSS antenna is placed near the receiver and the RF trace losses are not excessive
(nominally 1 dB), then a passive antenna may be used. This would often be the lowest cost
option and most of the time the simplest to use. However, if the antenna needs to be located
away from the receiver, then an active antenna may be required to obtain the best system
performance. An active antenna includes a built- in low noise amplifier (LNA) to overcome RF
trace and cable losses. Also, many active antennas have a pre-select filter, a post-select filter,
or both.
Important specifications for an active antenna LNA are gain and noise figure.
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