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This article gives a brief introduction to the high-precision GNSS antenna, focusing on its application in different industries and the technical status of high-precision GNSS antennas at home and abroad, and an overview of its market conditions and development trends.
After the read, you can learn about:
What is the high-precision GNSS antenna?
Development and application of high-precision GNSS antenna
GNSS antenna technology status at home and abroad
Current status and prospects of the GNSS antenna market
Development trend of high-precision GNSS antennas
Here we go!
Introduction With the continuous development and improvement of satellite positioning technology, high-precision positioning technology has been applied to all walks of life in modern life, such as surveying and mapping, precision agriculture, unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned driving, and other fields, the figure of high-precision positioning technology can be seen everywhere.
Especially with the completion of the networking of Beidou’s new-generation satellite navigation system and the advent of the 5G era, the continuous development of Beidou+5G is expected to promote high-precision positioning technology in airport scheduling, robot inspection, vehicle monitoring, logistics management, and other fields come to a broader application.
The realization of high-precision positioning technology is inseparable from the support of high-precision antennas, high-precision algorithms, and high-precision boards. This article mainly introduces the development and application of high-precision antennas and the current state of the technology.
Development and application of high-precision GNSS antenna
High-precision antennas definition
In the GNSS field, a high-precision antenna is a type of antenna that has special requirements for the stability of the antenna phase center. It is usually combined with a high-precision board to achieve centimeter-level or millimeter-level high-precision positioning.
In the design of high-precision antennas, there are usually special requirements for the following indicators of the antenna, antenna beamwidth, low elevation gain, out-of-roundness, roll-off coefficient, front-to-rear ratio, anti-multipath capability, etc. These indicators will directly or indirectly affect the phase center stability of the antenna and then affect the positioning accuracy.
Application and classification of high-precision antennas
High-precision GNSS antennas were initially mainly used in the field of surveying and mapping to achieve static millimeter-level positioning accuracy in engineering stakeout, topographic mapping, and various control survey processes.
With the increasing maturity of high-precision positioning technology, high-precision antennas are gradually being used in more and more fields, including continuous operation reference stations, deformation monitoring, earthquake monitoring, surveying and mapping, drones, precision agriculture, autonomous driving, In industrial fields such as construction machinery, there are significant differences in antenna requirements in different applications.
CORS system, deformation monitoring, earthquake monitoring-reference station antenna
When a high-precision antenna is used in a continuously operating reference station, accurate position information is obtained through long-term observation, and the observation data is transmitted to the control center in real-time through the data communication system, and the control center calculates the error correction parameters in the area before passing through the foundation augmentation system, wide-area augmentation system, satellite-based augmentation system, etc., send error information to the rover (user terminal), and ultimately enable users to obtain accurate coordinate information.
In applications such as deformation monitoring, earthquake monitoring, etc., due to the need to accurately monitor the amount of deformation, small deformations are detected to predict the occurrence of natural disasters.
Therefore, in the design of high-precision antennas such as continuously operating reference stations, deformation monitoring, and seismic monitoring applications, the first thing that must be considered is its excellent phase center stability and anti-multipath interference ability, so as to provide real-time enhancement accurate location information for various enhancement systems.
In addition, in order to provide as many satellite correction parameters as possible, the antenna must receive as many satellites as possible. Four systems and full frequency bands have become a standard configuration. In this type of application, the reference station antenna (reference station antenna) covering the full frequency band of the four systems is usually used as the observation antenna of the system.
Surveying and Mapping-Built-in measuring antenna
In the field of surveying and mapping, it is necessary to design a built-in measuring antenna that is easy to integrate. The antenna is usually built into the top of the RTK receiver to achieve real-time high-precision positioning in the field of surveying and mapping.
The main considerations in the design of the built-in measurement antenna include frequency band coverage, beam coverage, phase center stability, antenna size, etc. Especially with the popularization of network RTK applications, the full Netcom built-in measurement antennas that integrate 4G, Bluetooth, and WiFi gradually Occupies a major market share. Since its launch in 2016, it has been favored by the majority of RTK receiver manufacturers and has been widely applied and promoted.
Driving test, driving training, unmanned driving-external measurement antenna
The traditional driving test system has many disadvantages, such as high investment cost, high operation, and maintenance cost, large environmental impact, low accuracy, etc. After high-precision antennas are applied to the driving test system, the driving test system has changed from manual evaluation to intelligent evaluation. The high accuracy of the judgment greatly reduces the cost of manpower and material resources for the driving test.
In recent years, the unmanned driving system has developed rapidly. In unmanned driving, the positioning technology of RTK high-precision positioning and inertial navigation positioning is usually used, which can achieve high positioning accuracy in most environments.
In driving tests, driving training, unmanned driving, and other systems, the form of external measurement antenna is often used, which requires the antenna to have multi-system and multi-frequency working frequency bands, which can achieve high positioning accuracy and have certain suppression of multipath signals. Ability, and good environmental adaptability, can be used in outdoor environments for a long time without failure.
UAV-High precision drone antenna
In recent years, the UAV industry has developed rapidly. UAVs have been widely used in agricultural plant protection, surveying and mapping, power line inspection, and other scenarios. In such scenarios, only equipped with high-precision antennas can ensure the accuracy of various operations. , Efficient and safe.
Due to the characteristics of high speed, light load, and short endurance of UAVs, the high-precision antennas of UAVs mainly focus on factors such as weight, size, power consumption, etc., and realize the widest possible broadband design under the premise of ensuring weight and size.
GNSS antenna technology status at home and abroad
The status quo of foreign high-precision antenna technology
Foreign research on high-precision antennas started earlier, and a series of high-precision antenna products with better performance have also been developed, including many innovative antenna forms.
In the past ten years, with the rise of a large number of domestic manufacturers, foreign GNSS high-precision antennas have basically no advantages in performance. Instead, domestic high-precision manufacturers have begun to expand their markets abroad.
In recent years, C&T RF Antennas Inc has developed some new GNSS antennas. Its products are mainly small GNSS antennas for drones, vehicles, and other systems. The antenna form is usually a microstrip antenna with a high dielectric constant or a four-arm helical antenna.
Current status of domestic high-precision antenna technology
The productization of domestic high-precision GNSS antennas started late, but they have developed rapidly. In the past ten years, C&T RF Antennas Inc, a high-precision GNSS antenna manufacturer, has begun to grow and develop a series of high-precision antenna products with independent intellectual property rights.
For example, in the field of base station antennas and built-in measurement antennas, the all-NetCom combined antenna not only achieves the international leading level in performance, but also has high product reliability, long service life, and extremely low failure rate, which can meet various environmental applications.
In industries such as vehicles and drones, the design technology of external measurement antennas and four-arm helical antennas has been relatively mature and has been used on a large scale in industrial applications such as unmanned driving and drones, and has achieved good economic benefits and social benefits.
Current status and prospects of GNSS antenna market
In 2018, the total output value of my country’s satellite navigation and location service industry reached 301.6 billion yuan, an increase of 18.3% over 2017, and it will reach 400 billion yuan in 2020;
In 2019, the total output value of the global satellite navigation market was 150 billion Euros, and the number of GNSS terminal users reached 6.4 billion. In the context of the global economic downturn, the GNSS industry is one of the few industries that have risen against the trend.
The European Global Navigation Satellite System Agency predicts that the total output value of the global satellite navigation market will double by more than 300 billion euros in the next ten years, and the number of GNSS terminals will increase to 9.5 billion.
In the global satellite navigation market, terminal equipment used in road traffic, drones, and other fields is the fastest-growing market segment in the next ten years. Intelligent and unmanned vehicles are the main development directions for road vehicles in the future. Cars with driving ability must be equipped with high-precision GNSS antennas, so the autonomous driving market has a huge demand for GNSS antennas.
With the continuous development of my country’s agricultural modernization process, the number of drones equipped with high-precision positioning antennas such as plant protection drones will continue to increase.
Development trend of high-precision GNSS antennas
After years of development of high-precision GNSS antennas, various technologies have been relatively mature, but there are still many directions to be broken through.
Miniaturization GNSS antenna
The miniaturization of electronic equipment is an eternal development trend, especially in applications such as drones and handhelds, the demand for small-sized antennas is more urgent. However, the antenna performance will be reduced after the antenna is miniaturized. How to reduce the antenna size under the premise of ensuring the overall performance is an important research direction of high-precision antennas.
Anti-multipath technology GNSS antenna
GNSS antenna anti-multipath technology mainly includes choke coil technology, artificial electromagnetic material technology, etc., but they all have the disadvantages of large size, narrow bandwidth, high cost, etc., and cannot realize the universal design.
Therefore, it is necessary to study the anti-multipath with the characteristics of miniaturization and broadband path technology to meet the needs of various applications.
Multifunctional GNSS antenna
Nowadays, in addition to GNSS antennas, various devices have integrated more than one communication antenna. Different communication systems may cause various signal interferences to the GNSS antenna, which affects the normal reception of satellites.
Therefore, the integrated design of the GNSS antenna and the communication antenna is realized through multi-function integration, and the interference between the antennas is taken into account during the design, which can improve the electromagnetic compatibility characteristics and improve the performance of the whole machine while increasing the integration level.
With the popularization of 5G technology, Beidou+5G technology will further promote the application of high-precision positioning technology in more and more fields, and high-precision positioning antennas will also usher in more room for development.
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