Results of Absolute Field Calibration of GPS Antenna PCV

The electromagnetic behavior of antennas is not homogeneous. The so-called phase center variations (PCV) describe the signal reception of GPS antennas and have been an important field of interest for the GPS community during the last years and still are. It remains as a main goal to improve antenna calibration procedures and to evaluate their accuracy. The paper presents some results of an approach, which can determine azimuthand elevation-dependent PCV of GPS antennas in an absolute sense through a field calibration. The PCV for different antenna types derived from absolute field calibrations are evaluated and remaining error sources are discussed. The impact of absolute PCV on regional/global networks using mixed or even identical antenna types is characterized.