U.K. antenna firm Antenova Ltd. has developed a new surface-mount positioning antenna that achieves an extraordinary level of accuracy in the GNSS bands: it can pinpoint a location to within cm. The Raptor antenna uses the L2, 1200 MHz satellite bands, which recently became available for civilian use.

The latest addition to Antenova’s lamiiANT range of rigid FR4 antennas, designed for easy insertion onto a PCB, the Raptor is a GPS single-feed antenna, measuring just 16 mm x 8 mm x 1.6 mm, making it suitable for small PCBs within all kinds of small electronic devices. Raptor is supplied on tape & reel for high volume manufacturing.

The use of the L2 frequency band combines multi-band satellite signal reception and GNSS correction data, which helps mitigate position errors and greatly improves accuracy, especially in urban areas. The L2 band is beneficial for UAVs, drones, autonomous vehicles, agriculture, grid mapping and similar applications.

“This is an outstanding antenna, because it achieves the same precision as a much larger, heavier ceramic patch antenna but in a very compact SMD part. A ceramic antenna would need to be 35 mm x 35 mm to achieve a similar level of accuracy and performance.” — Colin Newman, CEO of Antenova

Antenova will be showing samples of the Raptor antenna at CES 2019, booth #2220 in the Westgate hall.