[time-nuts] To use or not to use transmission line splitters for GPS receivers

johncroos at aol.com johncroos at aol.com
Tue Oct 9 16:10:15 UTC 2012


Hello All -

I do not believe there is a hard Yes or No answer for this question.
It depends upon the performance specification of the system elements
and the system requirements.

For instance if the leakage of noise and discrete signals from each 
receiver out
of the antenna port combined with the port to port isolation of the 
power divider
is below the level of harm to the associated receivers then the answer 
is yes.
Otherwise NO.

The issue of antenna power is simply solved by placing a DC block in 
the line from the splitter to
all but one of the receivers. It then powers the antenna for all of 
them. I use this system with
a 3 way splitter and 3 T bolts. More elaborate and redundant schemes 
are possible with a bit of engineering.

I have several of the receivers developed by Novatel for the early WASS 
project experiments.
 These boxes used 3 receivers as both L1 and L2 were involved.

A standard Mini Circuits power splitter was employed to feed the 
antenna to all 3. Apparently that
sufficed for what was a pretty demanding requirement.

Finally - Anyone advocating a hard Yes or No to this question without 
first considering the performance
numbers for the system elements has been smoking their view-graphs. 
With proper design it is totally
feasible to feed a number of receivers from one antenna.

-john k6iql





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