Design of an integrated antenna for automotive applications

Due to specific requirements for automotive applications, the design of an integrated antenna system able to guarantee the connection to several wireless services, i.e. GPS, GSM/GPRS and COSPAS-SARSAT, must be faced as an optimization problem. Starting from electrical and geometrical constraints, the design of the antenna must be faced considering, in addition to usual antenna design procedures, also interferences phenomena arising from the integration of antennas belonging to different classes in a single compact device. In the paper are described the design phases of the device and the experimental and numerical validation activity conducted on a prototype of the antenna.