Tallysman releases new UAV helical GNSS antennas

The new helical antenna in both housed (right) and unhoused form. (Photo: Allison Barwacz)

Tallysman, a manufacturer of high-performance GNSS and iridium antennas, launched the first three products of a new range of helical antennas. Additional models will be announced in the third quarter of 2019 and onward.

Tallysman exhibited at booth 3739 at AUVSI Xponential 2019, which took place April 29 to May 2 in Chicago.

The first three models of the Tallysman helical family are:

• HC871 (25g) – A housed, dual band, active GNSS antenna, supporting GPS L1/L2,
  GLONASS G1/G2, Galileo E1, and BeiDou B1.
• HC872 (36g) – A housed, dual band, active GNSS antenna, supporting GPS L1/L2,
  GLONASS G1/G2, Galileo E1, BeiDou B1, and L-Band services.
• HC600 (18g) – A housed, passive Iridium antenna.

The active GNSS helical antennas feature a low-current, low-noise amplifier (LNA), and include integrated low-loss pre-filters, to protect against harmonic interference from high amplitude interfering signals, such as 700-MHz band LTE and other near in-band cellular signals.

Available in both housed and embedded OEM versions, the lightweight Tallysman helical antennas have excellent axial ratios, making them ideal for a variety of high-precision unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) applications, the company said.

The housed Tallysman helical antenna models feature a robust, military-grade plastic case, while the embedded Tallysman helical antenna models can be custom-tuned for any application and configured with a variety of cables and connectors.

“We think — if anything — the price-performance ratio is the biggest benefit,” Allen Crawford, director of key accounts at Tallysman, told GPS World. “The pre-filter is also unique to us; the robustness of the enclosure is unique to us; and also the shortness, which is important to a lot of aerodynamic vehicles.”

Patents have been applied for with respect to several aspects of these new products.

“There is a clear requirement for lightweight, high performance antennas for the rapidly growing UAV market,” said Tallysman President and CTO Gyles Panther. “These new patented helical products are an extension to our existing range of superlight L1/L2 patch antennas, and will provide customers with a wider choice of antenna formats to suit their specific application requirements. These are the first of a number of new products we plan to introduce for this application to support our already wide customer base for UAV antennas.”