Vehicle-conformal SDARS diversity antenna system by a fast operating diversity algorithm

There is a great desire for a low profile design or even hidden antenna systems according to styling conditions given by the automotive industry. For the time of being there are strong recommendations for a specific mounting location of SDARS-antenna in order to meet the required radiation pattern on a vehicle. For many vehicle models this location is considered as inconvenient and there is a strong demand to design more inconspicuous antennas. This design constraint for the SDARS antennas would cause intolerable high bit-error-rates resulting in too many interruptions in poor signal areas even though, up to two QPSK-modulated satellite signals and a terrestrial OFDM-modulated signal of the digital data stream are made available at a time however with an offset of time between each other. The intention of this paper is to present research results with respect to the additional obtainable improvements by mean of a fast switching antenna diversity system