Calian GNSS Ltd., a manufacturer of high performance GNSS and Iridium antennas, has announced the first three products of a new range of helical antennas for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
The new antennas have been unveiled at the AUVSI Xponential 2019 tradeshow in Chicago.
The first three models of the Calian helical family are:
- HC871 (25g) – A housed, dual band, active GNSS antenna, supporting GPS L1/L2, GLONASS G1/G2, Galileo E1, and BeiDou B1.
- HC872 (36g) – A housed, dual band, active GNSS antenna, supporting GPS L1/L2, GLONASS G1/G2, Galileo E1, BeiDou B1, and L-Band services
- HC600 (18g) – A housed, passive Iridium antenna
The active GNSS helical antennas feature a low current, Low Noise Amplifier (LNA), and include integrated low-loss pre-filters, to protect against harmonic interference from high amplitude interfering signals, such as 700MHz band LTE and other near in-band cellular signals.
Available in both housed and embedded OEM versions, the lightweight Calian helical antennas have excellent axial ratios, making them ideal for a variety of high-precision UAV applications.
The housed Calian helical antenna models feature a robust, military-grade plastic case, while the embedded Calian helical antenna models can be custom-tuned for any application and configured with a variety of cables and connectors.
Patents have been applied for with respect to several aspects of these new products.
“There is a clear requirement for lightweight, high performance antennas for the rapidly growing UAV market. These new patented helical products are an extension to our existing range of superlight L1/L2 patch antennas, and will provide customers with a wider choice of antenna formats to suit their specific application requirements”, says Calian’s President and CTO, Gyles Panther. “These are the first of a number of new products we plan to introduce for this application to support our already wide customer base for UAV antennas.”
