System concept of a compact multi-antenna GNSS receiver

Abstract

Many applications of GNSS, like transport of people or goods, in particular defense and law enforcement, demand ever more robust positioning solutions on a small scale. This work deals with a conceptual design of miniaturised multi-antenna GNSS receiver. Besides the mere geometrical miniaturisation of the footprint of the antenna array and the receiver, which is achieved by using integrated circuits and microstrip technology, the problems of the mutual coupling between antenna elements and signal correlation has been addressed by means of a decoupling and matching network (DMN) and digital-beamforming (DBF) algorithms. The combined HW/SW approach allows for decomposing the embedded antenna patterns into a new set of orthogonal patterns, yielding a subspace of beams which are the basis for succeeding DBF processors. As a first figure of merit, efficiency, regarding signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR), has been observed in simulations.