Experimental Study of the Effect of Paint on Embedded Automotive Antennas

In years have seen the advent of new types of automotive antennas, such as blade or 'shark-fin' antennas and conformal planar roof mounted antennas. In many cases it is desirable to paint these antennas to improve the appearance of the vehicle. In this communication we present an investigation of the effect that both metallic and non-metallic two-pack polyurethane paint has on a structure radiating at approximately 1.5 GHz (GPS Ll-band), with a particular emphasis on the impedance bandwidth and radiation performance.