CRPA Selection Demystified: More Antennas or More Frequencies?

In the world of GNSS, ensuring a reliable position, navigation, and timing (PNT) signal is paramount. As jamming threats escalate, Controlled Reception Pattern Antennas (CRPAs) have become a critical defense. However, a crucial design choice emerges: is it better to have a CRPA with fewer antennas covering multiple frequency bands, or one with more antennas focused on a single band?

The answer depends entirely on the operational environment. Let's demystify the selection process.

Understanding the Threat Environment: Civilian vs. Contested

The type of jamming you face dictates your defense strategy.

1. Civilian Environment: In most non-military scenarios, the threat comes from simple, low-power personal privacy jammers. These devices are almost exclusively designed to block the primary civilian GPS signal, L1. They are a nuisance but are not technologically sophisticated.

2. Contested Battlefield Environment: Modern battlefields, such as the one in Ukraine, present a far more severe threat. Adversaries deploy powerful, military-grade jammers that broadcast noise across all major GNSS bands simultaneously, including L1, L2, L5, and L6. The goal is to deny PNT service completely.

The Hidden Cost of "More Frequencies"

When evaluating CRPA systems, it's easy to assume that covering more frequency bands is inherently better. However, this overlooks a fundamental trade-off in complexity, cost, and, most importantly, performance.

Let's define a unit of complexity as an "antenna-band."

• A 4-antenna CRPA covering three bands (L1/L2/L5) has a complexity factor of: $4\text{ antennas}\times 3\text{ bands}=12\text{ antenna-bands}$

• An 8-antenna CRPA covering a single band (L1) has a complexity factor of: $8\text{ antennas}\times 1\text{ band}=8\text{ antenna-bands}$

From a design and manufacturing perspective, the 4-antenna, tri-band system is inherently more complex and costly to produce than the 8-antenna, single-band system. But does that higher cost translate to better protection?

Performance Under Fire: Why More Antennas Win

In a contested environment saturated with wideband jammers, the number of antenna elements is the single most important factor for resilience. Here’s why:

A CRPA defeats jammers by creating "nulls" in the antenna's reception pattern—essentially blind spots pointed directly at the interference source. The number of jammers a CRPA can null is directly related to the number of antenna elements it has (specifically, N-1 nulls for N antennas).

Let's compare our two systems against a military-grade jammer broadcasting on L1, L2, and L5:

• 4-Antenna L1/L2/L5 CRPA: This system must defend all three bands from interference. With only 4 antenna elements, it can generate a maximum of 3 nulls toward the jammers. If there are more than 3 different jammer directions, the system will be overwhelmed.

• 8-Antenna L1 CRPA: This system focuses all its resources on protecting the critical L1 band. A standard L1 GNSS receiver is only affected by the L1 portion of the wideband jamming. With 8 antenna elements, this CRPA can generate a maximum of 7 nulls. This allows it to suppress interference from up to seven different directions, offering vastly superior protection and ensuring the L1 receiver continues to function.

Conclusion: In a jamming-contested battlefield, the 8-antenna L1 CRPA provides significantly better resilience than the 4-antenna multi-band CRPA.

This isn't just a theoretical advantage. We are seeing this principle play out in real-world conflicts. As detailed in a recent Forbes article, Russian Shahed drones have been observed evolving, with their initial 4-antenna CRPAs being replaced by systems with 8, 12, and even more elements to survive Ukraine's robust electronic warfare capabilities.

Choosing the Right Tool for Your Application

Our philosophy is to provide the right tool for the job.

For civilian use, commercial drones, or situations where contested jamming is not the primary concern, our available 2-antenna AJAS-2 is an excellent and cost-effective solution for defeating common L1 jammer.

However, for military and defense applications where performance under electronic attack is non-negotiable, the path forward is clear: maximize your antenna elements.

The Future of Anti-Jamming is Here

We are committed to delivering the most resilient PNT protection on the market. Based on the clear evidence from modern EW environment, our development roadmap is focused on increasing antenna element counts to provide an unmatched advantage.

• Coming January of 2026: 8-antenna L1 CRPA systems.

• Coming Q2 2026: 16-antenna and 24-antenna L1 CRPA systems.

These next-generation systems are designed for platforms that demand the highest level of PNT assurance in the modern EW environments.

If you are developing systems for a contested future and wish to be notified when these advanced CRPA solutions become available, please leave us a message. Secure your advantage today.