Weighted Partial Radiation Efficiency and Effective Coverage as Key Performance Indicators for the Analysis of Automotive Antennas

It is essential to characterize the automotive antenna
in its installed state because the metallic car body has a
significant influence on the antenna's performance. In this connection,
the 5GAA has recommended certain key performance
indicators (KPIs), such as the Total Radiated Power (TRP), Partial
Radiated Power (PRP), etc. for evaluating automotive antennas.
However, these KPIs do not adequately reflect the vehicular
integration effects on the antenna’s performance. In order
to fill this gap, two novel KPIs have been proposed in this paper,
namely, the weighted Partial Radiation Efficiency and Effective
Coverage. The weighting scheme for the calculation of the KPIs
has been defined based on direction of importance. To demonstrate
their significance, two different vehicular antenna integration
topologies have been evaluated employing the KPIs.
The results have been compared with existing metrics namely
PRP and TRP.