Ficosa

Presentation

FICOSA is an independent industrial group founded in 1949, engaged in the research, development, production, and commercialization of automotive systems and components. Based in Barcelona (Spain), the FICOSA Group has a global team of 8500 professionals and a presence in 19 countries around the world over 3 continents. ADVANCED AUTOMOTIVE ANTENNAS S.L. is a business unit within the FICOSA group producing Telematic Control Units (TCU), Antennas, and V2X communication units for cars, as a Tier-1 supplier in the automotive market.

Since 2003 Ficosa has its own Antenna technology patented and implemented on several vehicles and different vehicle locations such as exterior mirrors, dashboard, on glass, internal in ECU’s, on plastics, under-glass, roof for different services such as :

  • AM/FM, DAB, TV, RKE.
  • Telephony 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G.
  • GPS, Galileo, Glonass, Beidou.
  • SDARS.
  • Wifi 802.11 a, b, g, n, ac
  • V2X
  • Bluetooth and BLE

The business unit has high-end capability tools for the Design and validation of antennas such as software tools as FEKO for Electromagnetic simulation and anechoic chambers for 3D and 2D antenna pattern measurement.

FICOSA developed within the GSA ESCAPE project a prototype of a high-precision positioning module (compatible with GNSS/Galileo multi-constellation/multi-frequency high precision receiver).

Role in the project

Ficosa coordinates the project and as a highly experienced antenna & Telematics Tier-1 supplier will perform the antenna design and development with the consequent business development and dissemination of the product.

The development of a new cost-effective GNSS multi-frequency antenna means the design of new multi-frequency GNSS antenna geometries able to receive at least L1/E1, L5/E5, and E6 bands (a better antenna design in terms of Antenna Gain and Phase centre stability without increasing the radiating element cost) and develop new antenna amplifier with multi-frequency answer, low noise behaviour and low group delay between bands to ensure antenna phase centre stability.

Ficosa will completely characterize and test the developed antenna in Free Space and vehicle conditions.

Ficosa, as a coordinator will be in charge:

  • to define all the possible patents from all the work realized
  • antenna development
  • the follow ups (will be done internally in Ficosa, according the different HW design loops and timing definition of the project and work packages)
  • 3D antenna’s measurement, GNSS field measurements and performance evaluation.