Low-Cost Hybrid Additive Manufacturing of a Miniaturized Dual Band Stacked Patch Antenna for GNSS Applications

The utilization of low-cost hybrid additive manufacturing equipment for creating a fully integrated patch antenna system is demonstrated. A miniaturized stacked dual-band patch antenna for GNSS applications with integrated feed, amplifier, matching, and bias network is considered. Design and manufacturing challenges due to the peculiarities of hybrid additive manufacturing, like anisotropic substrates, thermal curing steps, and poor layer adhesion between different materials, are discussed, and solutions are proposed. In this work, the passive part of the antenna is manufactured, and its measured performance is compared to results obtained via numerical simulations. An excellent agreement between simulation and measurement of the passive antenna is observed. The results of the fully integrated and active antenna will be demonstrated at the conference.