QUESTION

Question

For the Beltii GNSS antenna, I am considering it because it can be placed in a corner and because I will have batteries in close proximity to the underside of the board.

I have the room on my board to give it some ground clearance on the board itself.  Will this aid the efficiency of the antenna at all or should I not even bother?

Also, on the dev board and the data sheet, the antenna is placed on the "right" side of the board with pin 1 closest to the corner.  If I want to place it on the "left" side of the board with pin 1 closest to the corner, can I do it on the top plane or do I need to switch it over to the bottom?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Hello Brendan

Firstly, from my experience with the Beltii GNSS antenna, you will need to match the antenna in your enclosure with the batteries present. I have found the Beltii GNSS antenna’s performance and RF characteristics are very influenced by its surroundings until tuned.

There are no negative effects of ground clearance, closest to the evaluation board means the antenna performance will be closest to that on the datasheet. In saying this the datasheet does say “no GND clearance required”.

From the radiation pattern on Page 4 of the datasheet it looks like it would be better to have the antenna on the side of the antenna that would be facing towards the sky if that’s possible.

In regard to placing the antenna on the “left” side of the board, you may have to contact Antonova as its unclear in the datasheet.

Kind regards, 

Paul