Tag: GNSS antennas

NovAtel Launches Wideband GNSS Antenna

NovAtel GPS-704-WB wideband antenna.

NovAtel Inc. has launched the GPS-704-WB wideband antenna, which supports L-band and the frequencies of all current GNSS constellations (GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and BeiDou), including B3 and E6 signals. Customers can use the antenna for GPS-only or multi-constellation applications, giving application developers flexibility, NovAtel said.

The phase center offset of the antenna remains constant as the azimuth and elevation angle of the satellites change, making it a good choice for baselines of any length. Installation is easy, NovAtel said. because the antenna shares the same form factor as other NovAtel GPS-700 series antennas. It is enclosed in a durable, waterproof housing. Its compact, lightweight size makes it suitable for a wide variety of environments and applications, the company said.

April 24, 2015
Antenova M2M Showcases Brevis GNSS Tracking Antenna

Antenova Brevis antenna is tiny at 11mm x 6mm.

The Brevis GNSS antenna is the latest addition to Antenova’s gigaNOVA family of miniature antennas. The small antenna is designed to be used in portable handheld devices that have GNSS receivers — for example, in devices and applications that have a tracking capability or location accessories such as in transport, navigation, wearables and eHealth.

The multi-GNSS antenna is designed for embedded applications, with a high efficiency-to-size ratio. It is intended for use in applications where there is no ground beneath the antenna. It has near omni-directional characteristics which will provide good performance for any device.

The Brevis operates with the following GNSS bands: GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and BeiDou. Brevis GNSS is a low-profile, small-footprint antenna designed for surface-mount device (SMD) mounting, so it can simply be placed on a printed circuit board (PCB) to add wireless connections to any device.

Full technical specifications for the Brevis GNSS antenna and contact details for regional distributors are available on Antenova’s website.

April 22, 2015
Tallysman GNSS Antennas Optimized for Multi-Constellation Systems

Tallysman’s compact GNSS TW1721 dual-feed embedded antenna with Accutenna technology.

Tallysman, a provider of high-performance, high-quality RF and GNSS components, has announced that its range of antennas featuring proprietary Accutenna technology is optimized for today’s multi-constellation satellite systems, including Europe’s Galileo, China’s next-generation BeiDou, GPS, GLONASS and India’s IRNSS.

Tallysman’s compact GNSS antenna range with Accutenna technology is future-proof: GNSS is changing, and an increasing number of receivers are capable of accessing multiple constellations — GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou — but to provide the high precision these new generation of satellites enable also requires new antenna technology.

Tallysman’s proprietary Accutenna dual-feed patch technology used in the company’s wide range of GNSS antennas provides circular response over the entire antenna bandwidth, yielding superior multi-path signal rejection-low axial ratios, tight phase center variation (PCV), and a linear phase response. Single-feed patch antennas, by contrast, only provide a circular response at a single frequency and exhibit poor multipath signal rejection when receiving signals from two or more constellations. A pre-filtering option is available that gives additional protection from near out-of-band signals if required.

“Today’s wideband GNSS signals require a pure right-hand-circular response over a much wider bandwidth,” said Gyles Panther, president of Tallysman. “An inadequate phase response results in poor cross polarization suppression, which simply cannot be overcome in the GNSS receiver chip, regardless of its capabilities. Moreover, multipath interference can be expected, even in normal reception situations. Accutenna technology is a cost-effective way to ameliorate this and is particularly beneficial in situations where precision matters.”

In March, the European Space Agency launched two additional satellites (Galileo 7 and 8). Also in March, the United States launched GPS IIF-9, India launched IRNSS-1D, and China successfully launched its new generation BeiDou-3 M1. The expanding number of satellites will benefit many applications, from next-generation in-car navigation systems to coastguard search and rescue and precision agriculture, Tallysman said.

April 20, 2015
Hemisphere GNSS Offers RTK-Capable Compass Antenna

The Hemisphere GNSS V320 GNSS compass.

Hemisphere GNSS is offering a new RTK-enabled Vector V320 GNSS compass. The Vector V320 smart antenna supports multi-frequency GPS, GLONASS, Galileo (future firmware upgrade required) and BeiDou, and Hemisphere GNSS says it’s “the first of its kind.”

Designed for the professional marine and marine survey markets, the Vector V320 is the a multi-frequency, multi-GNSS, all-in-one smart antenna capable of both RTK-level positioning accuracy and better than 0.2-degree heading accuracy in a simple-to-install package.

“The Vector V320 combines our expertise in GNSS and smart antenna design,” said Lyle Geck, senior manager, Product Marketing, at Hemisphere GNSS. “With RTK performance that competes with current industry leaders, extremely accurate accelerometer-aided GNSS heading, and the simplicity of install offered by the smart antenna design, it is an incredible product.”

The Vector V320 is the latest in a line of GPS/GNSS compasses, including the multi-frequency, multi-GNSS Vector VS330 receiver as well as the Vector V102, Vector V103 and Vector V104 compass smart antennas.

“There has been a void in the market. Our customers have been looking for a product that provides RTK accuracy together with precision heading in an easy-to-install package,” said Andy Smith, managing director of Saderet Ltd. “The Vector V320 delivers.”

The Vector V320 GNSS compass is being featured by Hemisphere GNSS at Ocean Business in Southampton, UK, April 14-16, at stand K12.

April 14, 2015
Tallysman GPS/GNSS Antennas Available in Australia, New Zealand

TW4421 wideband dual-feed GPS/GLONASS antenna.

Two dual-feed GPS/GLONASS antennas from Tallysman’s GNSS antenna range are now available in Australia and New Zealand through M2M Connectivity. Tallysman is a Canada-based developer of high-performance GNSS antennas focused on the requirements for precision and multi-constellation GNSS receivers.

Featuring a dual-feed wide-band patch element, Tallysman’s TW2410 and TW4421 antennas cover the GPS L1, GLONASS G1 and SBAS (WAAS, EGNOS and MSAS) frequency band (1574 to 1606 MHz). The dual-feed patch provides excellent circular polarized signal reception, multipath rejection and out-of-band signal rejection, according to Tallysman.

Offering tight phase center variation (PCV), the antennas are suitable for high-accuracy applications and for use in precise point positioning (PPP) systems that require only a single frequency such as single-frequency RTK solutions, GNSS compasses and machine control.

Suitable for precision industrial, agricultural and military applications, the dual-feed GPS/GLONASS antennas feature Tallysman’s Accutenna technology that provides superior or multipath signal rejection and precision. The TW2410 and TW4421 antennas are housed in IP67 industrial-grade weather-proof, magnet mount enclosures and come with a wide range of connector options and cable lengths.

Tallysman is a manufacturer of high-performance, high-quality products for a wide range of GNSS applications.

April 7, 2015
On the Edge: The Precision to Carry On

Components easily pack into a baseball-style case. Photo: Nicholas DiGruttolo

By Nicholas DiGruttolo

When asked to do a small survey job overseas, we were concerned about shipping bulky and expensive survey equipment. Shipping costs are not trivial. Add to that the real possibility that your survey equipment may be confiscated by the local authorities, as ours was in Djibouti, and the cost of shipping equipment becomes a substantial part of the overall job. There should be alternatives, especially if accuracy requirements are not stringent.

Faced with this problem for a second time, we considered a new receiver system that has many advantages over conventional survey-grade GNSS receivers: It is small, lightweight and low-cost without sacrificing performance, making it ideal for precision surveying in remote areas of the world and for traveling to the job site by commercial airline. All the components, including the tripods, rods and batteries, are constructed from commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components. A complete base and rover kit fits in a baseball bag and weighs less than 10 kilograms. The kit is sized and approved as carry-on luggage.

The system is scalable from a simple single-frequency semi-mobile receiver for control networks and some semi-kinematic mapping applications, to a dual-frequency network RTK solution.

The system comes with free processing software that supports carrier-phase relative positioning in real time and post mission, as well as precise-point positioning (PPP) and CA-code differential correction. The software is designed with a simple user interface for easy selection of base and rover data or automatic data download of the closest Continuously Operating Reference Station (CORS) from the U.S. National Geodetic Survey database.

Complete survey set including GNSS receiver, antenna, battery and cables, fits in a small handheld plastic case. Photo: Nicholas DiGruttolo

The system fills a gap between survey applications, where centimeter-level precision is an absolute necessity, and mapping applications, where meter-level is tolerable. The product offers sub-foot precision in most cases and centimeter precision in ideal situations.

Our team recently performed topographic mapping of an oil refinery site in Saudi Arabia and surveyed a precise-elevation network in Sarasota, Fla., to research the effects of sea-level rise. The small size of the COTS components simplified transport to Saudi Arabia, eliminating additional airline baggage fees and easing import through customs. Researchers performing the sea-level study reduced field time by increasing the number of receivers needed to observe a robust vertical control network.

Oil Refinery. The oil refinery project entailed mounting a GNSS antenna on the roof of an off-road vehicle and driving multiple transects around the 18-kilometer perimeter of the site to record the elevation of the terrain. Kinematic data was recorded at 1 Hz using a GPS-only version of the single-frequency receiver. Baseline length to the local reference station varied from less than 1 kilometer to about 10 kilometers. The site was open desert with no overhead obstructions or sources of multipath other than the roof of the vehicle on which the antenna was mounted. Post-processing and comparison to simultaneously collected data from a high-precision survey-grade receiver revealed positional accuracy of about 5 centimeters horizontal and 10 centimeters vertical, when the system’s trajectory was compared to the truth trajectory provided by the survey-grade receiver. Figure 1 shows the difference between the two trajectories. The system’s antenna was 2 feet away from the survey-grade antenna along the driving direction of the vehicle; the trajectory was mostly in the north-south direction and hence the 0.6-m offset in the plot!

Figure 1. Antenna location difference in the sub-decimeter range between the survey-grade system and the compact low-cost system. Note: A 0.6-m offset is to be removed from the difference, as the two antennas were mounted 0.6 m apart in the vehicle driving direction.

Sea Level. The sea-level-rise study required a high-accuracy vertical control network to cover a 2,500 hectare area. The purpose of the network is to determine the shortest term effects of sea-level rise with a rate of 1.8 millimeter/year in the affected area. Ten benchmarks were established throughout the area of interest, and a robust network of static observations was performed with a combination of two dual-frequency and two single-frequency receivers. The single-frequency receivers were GPS-only units where two standard 4-inch patch antennas were mounted on rods adjusted to a 0.9-meter height. The addition of two receivers provided greater redundancy and a stronger network solution in much less time than would have been possible with only one pair of survey-grade receivers. Figure 2 shows the addition of several loop ties to the network as a result of adding the two roving, lightweight receivers.

Figure 2. Sea-level rise monitoring network showing increased tie points and redundancy as a result of adding the extra lightweight precision receivers to the survey-grade receivers.

Manufacturers

The system described in this article is the G1 system developed by Geomatics USA, LLC (www.geomatics.us; see also www.navtechgps.com).

Nicholas DiGruttolo works as a field surveying manager for JBrown Professional Group Inc., Northrop Grumman Corporation, and has recently become vice president of surveying.

March 1, 2015
Microsemi GNSS Master Solves Small-Cell Synchronization Issue

Microsemi Corporation is offering a new Integrated GNSS Master (IGM) solution for small-cell synchronization. The IGM is the company’s first solution that fully integrates a 1588v2 PTP grandmaster with a GNSS receiver and antenna in a small, fully contained package, designed to mount indoors.

The Microsemi IGM solves the challenge of indoor synchronization, which has been a significant hurdle for cost-effective small cell indoor deployments.

According to the Small Cell Forum, 80 percent of small cell needs are for indoor use. Microsemi expects the company’s new IGM to revolutionize indoor small cell deployments by eliminating the need for an antenna on the rooftop along with expensive power, cabling and installation costs associated with connecting the GNSS antenna to the 1588 grandmaster in a typical small-cell deployment.

IGR reports that the cost to deploy a small cell is approximately $31,000 on average and much higher than the cost of the small cell itself. Similarly, the cost of deploying a GPS antenna on a roof is typically $15,000 to $25,000 and can go up to $60,000 in high-rise buildings, in addition to the roof rental expense on a yearly basis.

The Microsemi IGM eliminates the need for an outdoor antenna and therefore significantly reduces the purchase, installation and maintenance deployment costs for typical GNSS antenna systems. The sensitive GNSS receiver and patented Microsemi timing algorithms result in an indoor GNSS timing solution that can be deployed in many different indoor environments.

The IGM uses Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) to simplify installation by utilizing standard Ethernet within a facility and requires no more than 12.95 watts of power directly from the Ethernet cable. The IGM is mounted on the wall or ceiling, connected to the network via PoE, and the unit will automatically self-configure, lock to GNSS signals and provide precise frequency and phase with its 1588v2 PTP grandmaster needed for small cell operation.

“The IGM product introduction is a continued commitment from Microsemi to address market and customer challenges in timing and synchronization,” said Eric Colard, director of marketing and business development for Microsemi’s Frequency & Time Division. “The IGM solution complements our flagship timing products and will work with them in tandem to provide a truly end-to-end timing and synchronization solution.”

“Deploying small cells indoor to provide better coverage and enhance capacity is becoming a priority for operators,” said Richard Webb, Analyst, Mobile Backhaul, at Infonetics, recently acquired by IHS. “The challenge of tight synchronization requirements for LTE has been difficult to solve; Microsemi’s IGM innovative solution enables mobile operators to precisely synchronize small cells indoor and lower deployment costs.”

“The time is right for such an innovative and disruptive solution as IGM from Microsemi,” said Earl Lum, president, EJL Wireless Research. “Since Small Cells for indoor are now being readily deployed, Microsemi solves a critical cost issue and technical challenge operators are facing. The compact form factor, plug and play capability, and scalable client support of the IGM product hits the sweet spot for indoor small cell projects.”

February 26, 2015
GPS Source Offers Antenna for Harsh Environments

GPS Source has released a new GNSS antenna that is robust, lightweight, and suitable for harsh environments. It is designed for long-term, high-precision applications worldwide, the company said.

The antenna was engineered for the demanding aviation environment, in both commercial and military applications. Built to military standards (MIL-STD), it is impact resistant, tolerant of exposure to dust, chemicals and jet fuels, and has the ability to withstand shock and vibration.

Signal reception is unaffected by antenna placement. Designed to operate in the most extreme and demanding applications, it gives outstanding results, enabling maximum satellite reception, with ultra-low Dilution of Precision (DOP), GPS Source said.

“We are very excited about the new GNSS antenna,” said Robert Horton, CEO of GPS Source. “Our advanced technology provides superior performance in both GPS L1/L2 and GLONASS L1/L2. This is the best solution for technically demanding users.”

The antenna is available in multiple colors and with multiple connector options.

February 17, 2015
Tallysman Wraps Antennas in Armored Cable for Precision Ag, M2M

This photo shows the corrugated conduit covering the RG174 cable with Tallysman’s TW2410 antenna.

Tallysman’s enclosed antennas now come with optional armored corrugated cable. The standard RG174 cable is encased in a corrugated conduit of tough plastic, which maintains its functionality between the temperatures of -40 to +150C.

The extra protection increases the resilience of the antenna for use in precision agriculture, machine-to-machine, and other rugged applications.

Tallysman is a manufacturer of high-performance, high-quality products for a wide range of GNSS applications.

February 5, 2015
Tallysman TW5340 Smart Antenna Designed for Urban Canyons

A single-feed smart antenna (left) compared to the multipath rejection results of the new TW5340 smart antenna with Accutenna technology. Photo: Tallysman

Tallysman’s new TW5340 smart antenna is designed to pair Tallysman‘s Accutenna technology antenna with STMicroelectronics’ Teseo II receiver. The combination makes the smart antenna accurate for use in all environments, including urban canyons, according to the company.

The TW5340 is a multi-constellation GNSS Smart Antenna that provides simultaneous GPS/GLONASS/SBAS reception. It is designed for use in professional-grade applications such as precision timing, network synchronization, low current applications, and tracking/positioning applications.

To illustrate the advantages of this technology coupling, simultaneous recordings of vehicle position were conducted using two smart antennas — one with and one without Tallysman’s Accutenna technology — in an area of downtown Ottawa, Canada, notorious for high levels of multipath signals. Results show how the high multipath signal rejection capabilities of Tallysman’s Accutenna technology greatly improves accuracy, the company said.

The Tallysman TW5340 smart antenna.

The TW5340 supports STMicroelectronics Autonomous A-GPS, which accelerates GPS positioning by predicting satellite ephemeris data based on previous observations. This results in extremely fast time-to-first-fix. The TW5340 can be configured to output up to three NMEA 0183 message lists with navigation update rates up to 10 Hz. RS232, CMOS, and USB interfaces are available with input voltage options of 3,3V, 5.0V, and 12V. A standby-mode feature provides for very low current consumption (<100uA) and is particularly useful in battery-operated applications.

A standard one pulse-per-second 1PPS synchronized to UTC time is available as a single ended output or as a differential output at RS422 levels.

Tallysman’s Windows-based Configurator enables simple configuration of parameters such a baud rates, output message rates, constellation, tracking parameters, 1 PPS configuration and standby-mode parameters.

The TW5340 is housed in an IP67 housing and is REACH and ROHS compliant. A non-magnetic version is also available as Part Number TW5341.

November 6, 2014
Tallysman Wireless Discusses GNSS Antennas, New Product at InterGeo

Allen Crawford of Tallysman Wireless Inc. details the company’s GNSS antennas at InterGeo 2014, including a new product Tallysman Wireless plans to launch in the first quarter of 2015.

See more InterGeo videos at GPS World’s YouTube Channel.

October 17, 2014
ION GNSS+ 2014: Antcom Corporation

Robert Dumont, international sales manager at Antcom Corporation, discusses the rugged GNSS and communication antennas as well as the microwave accessories Antcom manufactures while at the 2014 ION GNSS+ Conference September 9-12 in Tampa, Florida.

September 22, 2014