The OnBoard series of GPS antennas combines high performance and low cost in this OnBoard SMD embedded antenna family, company officials say.
Traditionally, small low cost antennas for printed circuit board assembly have been manufactured with a dielectric substrate as the base for the radiating structure, Saelig officials explain.
With this approach, the antenna is normally a rectangular block, which means that the PCB area below the antenna is unavailable for mounting other components. Another drawback is that the substrate itself introduces dielectric losses to the antenna, reducing its total efficiency.
Proant has increased the antenna performance and design flexibility by combining this with low cost and manufacturability. The result is the OnBoard SMD antenna family which builds on previous OnBoard antennas, but in a surface mounted sheet metal solution, packaged in tape-on-reel and suitable for high volume manufacturing.
One of OnBoard's key features, which eliminates the need of the dielectric substrate used in other SMD antennas, is the capacitively loaded footprint of the antenna's supporting pins to reduce losses and increases the performance.
The surface-mount satellite navigation antennas are made in Sweden by Proant AB. For more information contact Saelig online at www.saelig.com, or Proant AB at www.proant.se.
