Dual Circularly Polarized Antennas with Low Cross-Polarization for GNSS-R Applications

Global Navigation Satellite System-Reflectometry (GNSS-R), has gained increasing interests as an efficient tool for remote sensing. It is based on the concept of utilizing the received signals reflected from the Earth’s surface. Several GNSS-R system configurations were proposed depending on different retrieval algorithms. In a GNSS-R system, the antenna plays a key role as a receiving component. In this paper, in-situ measurements using a commercial dual circular polarized antenna receiving both the left-hand and right-hand circular polarization reflected from the ground are analyzed. A low cost and compact dual-port circular polarized patch antenna is designed and realized to overcome the limitations of the previous configuration. The prototype shows a low level of cross polarization suitable for GNSS-R application.