A miniature GPS planar chip antenna integrated with low noise amplifier1

A planar chip antenna integrated with a low noise amplifier (LNA) for GPS applications at 1.575 GHz is presented in this paper. Software packages, XFDTD and HFSS have been applied to design the chip antenna having dimensions of 10 mm (L) times 8 mm (W) times 0.8 mm (H). An insert molding approach is applied to manufacture the antenna, where meandered metal strips are enclosed with liquid crystal polyester (LCP) to form the chip antenna. Thus, this chip antenna comprises a radiating structure of multiple meandered conducting strips packed with an LCP dielectric composite material to achieve size, performance characteristics and cost effectiveness superior to conventional GPS ceramic patch antennas. The compact surface-mount chip antenna is fully compatible with hand- and reflow- attachment processes. Also, no additional impedance-matching circuit is required so that the occupied length of the antenna built in a GPS receiver operating at 1.575 GHz is just 10 mm.