Performance Testing of a Distributed Automotive Satellite Navigation Array with Jammer in Virtual Environment

State-of-the-art antenna arrays require a significant installation area when envisaged for compact passenger cars, whose footprint area can be reduced by splitting the full array into two smaller, spatially distributed sub-arrays. The challenge of grating lobes develops while arranging the sub-arrays several wavelengths apart mounted on distant parts of a car. As a consequence, spatial sampling of the incident waves leads to ambiguous direction-of-arrival estimation. An inhomogeneous L-shaped orthogonal arrangement can, however, mitigate such drawbacks to some extent while allowing easier installation. The performance of such an array needs to be tested in a virtual electromagnetic environment in the course of the development process, even long before homologation. An example of such distributed array mounted on a conventional passenger car for satellite navigation is shown in this paper, and the array performance is tested in terms of positioning accuracy in presence of a jammer in our automotive antenna test facility.