Short answer
A flat ceramic or PCB GNSS antenna with a single dielectric-loaded radiating element on a ground plane. The dominant antenna type for compact, low-cost, vehicle, and OEM applications — ranging from 18 × 18 mm pucks to 100 mm survey-grade discs.
Detailed explanation
A patch antenna consists of a square or circular conducting patch printed on a dielectric substrate, with a ground plane behind. The patch dimensions are tuned to a quarter or half wavelength at the operating frequency — about 30 mm square at GPS L1 with high-permittivity ceramic loading, smaller with even higher εᵣ.
Pros: compact, low cost (few dollars in volume), trivially integrable into housings, omnidirectional in the upper hemisphere, naturally RHCP with proper feed design. Cons: narrow bandwidth (typically 10–30 MHz per band — fine for single-frequency, marginal for multi-band), modest gain (0–5 dBi), middling multipath rejection.
Multi-band patch antennas (L1+L2+L5 in one stack) are the workhorse of modern compact GNSS — vehicle antennas, UAV antennas, surveying handhelds, machine-control antennas. They typically stack 2–3 patches separated by foam or air gaps, each tuned to a different band, with a single feed combining them.
GNSource patch products span from the ultra-compact TDXL-LCA series (helical / patch hybrids under 100 g for UAV) through the vehicle-mounted TDXL-CZ series to multi-band geodetic patches that approach choke-ring performance at a fraction of the size. Selection comes down to bandwidth requirements, multipath environment, weight budget, and cost.
Where you'll see this
High-Precision GNSS Measurement
Browse product lineRelated terms
Helical antenna
A coiled-wire GNSS antenna offering broader bandwidth than a patch in a similar footprint, naturally circularly polarised. Common in UAV / aviation applications where the form factor (10–30 mm diameter cylinder) fits drone arms or wing-mount sockets.
Choke ring antenna
A geodetic GNSS antenna with concentric corrugated grooves around the radiating element that absorb low-elevation signal reflections. Provides the best multipath rejection and most stable phase centre of any commercial GNSS antenna, at the cost of bulk and weight (typical 380 mm diameter, 5–10 kg).
Phase center
The apparent electrical centre of an antenna — the point from which signal range is effectively measured by a GNSS receiver. Phase-centre stability (the variation in this point as the signal arrival angle changes) is the single most important parameter for survey-grade and geodetic antennas.
LNA
An amplifier with very low added noise (typical NF 1–2.5 dB at L-band) placed as close to the antenna element as possible. Sets the cascaded noise figure of the entire receiver chain and lets the antenna drive long cable runs without C/N₀ loss.