Antenna - Notes
Antenna - Notes
Antenna - Notes
MSc Electronics
What is antenna?
The purpose of antenna is to convert radio-frequency electric current of electromagnetic waves, which often term as
Radiated waves.
Field Intensity
The energy from a propagated wave decreases with distance from the source. This decrease in strength is caused by
the spreading of the wave energy over ever-larger spherical
surfaces as the distance from the source increases.
Radiation mechanism of Antenna
•By separating the wire more area is exposed to atmosphere and enhance the radiation pattern.
•The radiation efficiency is further improves when the wires bent at 90deg.
•The electric and magnetic field is fully coupled to the surrounding instead of being combined.
Current and voltage distribution
•When power is fed to an antenna, the current and voltage vary along its length. The current is minimum at the
ends, regardless of the antenna’s length. The current does not actually reach zero at the current minima, because of
capacitance at the antenna ends.
•In the case of a half-wave antenna there is a current maximum at the center and a voltage minimum at the center.
Cont…
•The pattern of alternating current and voltage minimums 1⁄4 wavelength apart repeats every 1⁄2 wavelength along a
linear antenna.
•The phase of the current and voltage are inverted in each successive half-wavelength section.
Feed point impedance
There are two forms of impedance associated with any antenna: self impedance and mutual impedance
Self Impedance
The self impedance of the antenna is simply equal to the voltage applied to its feed point divided by the current
flowing into the feed point according to Ohm’s Law.
Current and voltage are exactly in phase - impedance is purely resistive, and the antenna is resonant
Except at the one frequency where it is exactly resonant, the current in an antenna has a different phase compared to
the applied voltage.
Mutual Impedance
Mutual impedance is the ratio of voltage in one conductor, divided by the current in another (coupled) conductor.
Isotropic radiator
•Infinitely small antenna at a point located in outer space, completely removed from anything else around it.
•The uniquely useful property of this theoretical point source antenna is that it radiates equally well in all directions.
Near field
Inductive Capacitive
•For simple wire antennas, the reactive near field is considered to be within
about a half wavelength from an antenna’s radiating freq..
where L is the largest dimension of the physical antenna expressed in the same units of measurement as the
wavelength λ.
The total energy is equally divided between the electric and magnetic fields.
Antenna Parameters
Radiation pattern
A graph showing the actual or relative field intensity at a fixed distance as a function of the direction from the
antenna system, is called a radiation pattern.
Or
3-dimensional plot of radiation at far field.
Radiation intensity
Power radiated from an antenna per unit solid angle.
The directive gain G(θ,φ) of the antenna is a measure of the concentration of the radiated power in a particular
direction (θ,φ).
Directivity
The directivity of antenna is the ratio of the maximum radiation intensity to the average radiation intensity
Power gain
Radiation efficiency
The ratio of power gain in any specified direction (θ,φ) to the directive gain in that direction is referred to as radiation
efficiency.
Dipole Antenna
The dipole is a fundamental form of antenna — in its most common form it is
approximately one-half wavelength (1⁄2 λ) long at the frequency of use.
A dipole is resonant when its electrical length is some odd multiple of 1⁄2 l so that the current and voltage in the
antenna are exactly 90° out of phase.
Radiation patterns
The radiation pattern of a dipole antenna in free space is strongest at right angles to the wire.
At length of λ/2
(A) (B)
The positive sign in the + j 42.5ohm reactive term indicates that the antenna exhibits an inductive reactance at its feed
point.
The presence of the ground plane below allows monopole to work as electrically equivalent to a dipole antenna.
This mechanism is explained by the ‘image theory’, where a current-carrying conductor above a conducting surface
creates its inverse image.
The length of the monopole is determined by its wavelength ‘λ’, which should be at least a quarter of wavelength.
The total radiation from a quarter-wave λ/4 monopole is half of the corresponding dipole antenna.
Monopole antenna placed above infinite conducting ground plane results in radiation pattern similar to a dipole.
Radiation would only in the upper half hemisphere results half of the power is radiated compared with a dipole for
the same current I.
The directivity of the monopole is twice of a dipole. The increase in directivity comes from the fact that only radiation in the upper
hemisphere.
Loop Antenna
Small loop
The antenna feed points would be in series with the loop, such that a small loop looks somewhat like
a short circuit across the antenna feed, called loop antenna.
These antennas have low radiation resistance and high inductive reactance, so that their impedance is
difficult to match to a radio impedance (often 50 Ohms).
As a result, these antennas are most often used as receive antennas, where impedance mismatch loss
can be a bit more easily tolerated in some systems.
A small loop antenna has low radiation resistance. If multi-turn ferrite core constructions are used, then high
radiation resistance can be achieved.
Applications
•Gain 10-20dB
•This is because the size of the horn aperture is always measured in wavelengths; at higher frequencies the horn
antenna is "electrically larger"; this is because a higher frequency has a smaller wavelength.
The smaller dish antennas typically operate somewhere between 2 and 28 GHz. The large dishes can operate in the
VHF region (30-300 MHz)
Unlike resonant antennas like the dipole antenna which are typically approximately a half-wavelength long at the
frequency of operation, the reflecting dish must be much larger than a wavelength in size.
The ratio F/D, which usually range between 0.3 and 1.0.
•Characterstic of the circuit or the antenna determine by the dimension in one plane.
Coax feed
Common Shapes
Elliptical Triangular
Working V=0, I=max V=max, I=0
z
Ex - - - - - + + + + +
r Ey
Ey h
Ex
x
λ/2
•The fringing fields around the antenna can help explain why the microstrip antenna radiates.
•Consider the side view of a patch antenna, the current at the end of the patch is zero (open circuit end), the current is
maximum at the center of the half-wave patch and (theoretically) zero at the beginning of the patch.
•It is the fringing fields that are responsible for the radiation. Note that the fringing fields near the surface of the patch
antenna are both in the +y direction. Hence, the fringing E-fields on the edge of the microstrip antenna add up in
phase and produce the radiation of the microstrip antenna.
For Antenna The fundamental mode of a rectangular patch is TM10 mode.
Εr-> low
H-> high
*The overall dielectric const. experienced by the geometry is not Er, E, eff<ER
Advantages of Microstrip Antennas
• Low profile (can even be “conformal,” i.e. flexible to conform to a surface).
• Easy to fabricate (use etching and photolithography).
• Easy to feed (coaxial cable, microstrip line, etc.).
• Easy to incorporate with other microstrip circuit elements and integrate into systems.
• Only used at microwave frequencies and above (the substrate becomes too large at lower
frequencies).
•The number, geometrical arrangement, and relative amplitudes and phases of the array
elements depend on the angular pattern that must be achieved.
Array factor
We consider a three-dimensional array of several identical antennas located at positions d0, d1,
d2, . . . with relative feed coefficients a0, a1, a2, . . . ,
The current density of the nth antenna will be Jn(r)= an×J(r - dn)
The factor F(k) due to a single antenna element at the origin is common to all terms