CRPA GPS Antenna vs Standard GPS Antenna: What Changes Under Jamming
A CRPA GPS antenna keeps your receiver locked when a standard GPS antenna would lose it. The difference is not sensitivity — it is direction. Here is what you gain, what it costs, and when it is worth it.
What a CRPA GPS antenna does differently
A CRPA GPS antenna is a controlled reception pattern antenna built for GPS and other GNSS signals. Where a standard GPS antenna receives the whole sky with one fixed pattern, a CRPA GPS antenna uses several elements to steer deep nulls toward interference while it keeps receiving the satellites.
Under quiet conditions the two perform much the same. The difference appears the moment a jammer is switched on.
Under jamming: standard GPS antenna
A standard antenna passes the jammer straight to the receiver along with the satellites. GNSS signals arrive below the noise floor, so even a low-power jammer nearby raises the noise until the receiver can no longer track. The fix degrades, then drops. A better receiver or a better low-noise amplifier does not change this; the jammer is inside the band you need.
Under jamming: CRPA GPS antenna
A CRPA GPS antenna attenuates the jammer by direction before the signal reaches the receiver. infoX CRPA antennas quote single-jammer suppression from ≥95 dBc on the smallest 4-element model to ≥120 dBc on the largest arrays, and they keep suppressing as more jammers are added, up to N−1 jammers for N elements.
Suppression falls as the jammer count rises, which is why the figures are quoted per jammer count. See reading dBc on an anti-jam datasheet for how to read them.
Side by side
| Standard GPS antenna | CRPA GPS antenna | |
|---|---|---|
| Reception pattern | Fixed | Adaptive, nulls toward jammers |
| Behaviour under jamming | Loses lock | Keeps tracking up to N−1 jammers |
| Spoofing | Accepts the counterfeit signal | Suppressed on anti-spoofing models |
| Weight (infoX range) | Tens of grams | 130 g to 2600 g |
| Power (infoX range) | Milliwatts | ≤6 W to ≤40 W |
| Typical use | Consumer, survey in clean environments | UAV, eVTOL, UGV, timing stations |
When a CRPA GPS antenna is worth it
When losing GNSS is a mission failure rather than an inconvenience: beyond-visual-line-of-sight delivery, air taxis, unmanned ground vehicles, survey work near interference, and timing references for critical infrastructure.
For small drones, size and weight decide first. The TX-S65-4CH-SNB is a 4-element CRPA GPS antenna at 65 × 65 × 21 mm and ≤130 g, drawing ≤6 W. See integrating a CRPA antenna on a drone.
Choosing one
Compare all eight models — element count, weight, power, constellations and anti-spoofing — in our CRPA antenna range, or send us your platform and we will name the model.