My car GPS navigation seems to not work well, or, not at all, during some days. Retrospectively, these days seem to correlate well with solar storm.What in essence seems to be a problem is signal strength and correlation of satellites to identify a single location. Solar radio noise can reduce SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) of GPS satellites, so better antennas as only option to work through these days seems to provide a bit of improvement.

Diagram

(1) Between the solar glass roof and the passenger sided cover of this glass roof, I installed a large GPS receiver antenna on top of an aluminum board. With that, I wanted to make sure that the antenna gets as much celestial GPS signal as ever possible. So far I have not considered a bent shape for the aluminum. Testing signal strength by using “GPS status” android software, I found that the size and extent of the aluminum shielding is quite important.

Antenna:

(2) The antenna is connected to a GPS car booster antenna that has the role of providing strong GPS signal for the cell phone with GPS receiver and navigation software.

(3) The system is powered via a USB hub that has an on/off switch. So I use that system for days with very noisy and bad GPS signal. Conversely, it is not necessary to use it when the space weather provides for absent or low solar influence on satellites.

(4) The cell phone and the GPS booster antenna are positioned close to each other, and they are separated from the GPS receiver antenna by the aluminum board.

Photos

A view through the glass roof shows underneath that the GPS receiver antenna sits on top of a lot of (reflective) alumnium.

A more detailed view. I used black duck tape (“duct tape”) to fix the antenna to the aluminum board.

This shows the car inside with the sun roof cover. I used a zipped hose to guide the cables to the antenna.

The inside-car GPS booster antenna sits on the dashboard, where I mounted it (also) with duck tape. The cell phone mount (find these at http://www.proclipusa.com) is directly next to it. Also, you can see my pocket DAB radio mount – obviously cool because after driving somewhere I have a fully charged pocket DAB radio that is easy to slide out (or back in) to the device mount.

The GPS booster antenna simply switches on or off with this USBhub.

For rough GPS reception, get printed maps and know the area by heart.