Antenna-Diversity Techniques in Cars for FM-Radio, TV and Cellular Phone

Car producers prefer multi antenna scanning diversity systems to improve FM and TV reception quality. These systems are highly efficient and cost effective to reduce distortions going along with multipath propagation. A criterion for the diversity effectiveness of a multi-antenna arrangement on a car is derived. This number of equivalent decorrelated antennas being effective is evaluated by turntable antenna measurements as a basis for computer simulated virtual drives in a Rayleigh wave propagation scenario. The comparison of different antenna arrangements shows that even compact antenna systems integrated on one single car window provide high diversity effectiveness. Even mobile phone reception quality for GSM can be increased.