University of Santo Tomas Faculty of Engineering Electronics Engineering Department

Demonstration 12 Folded Antenna Elements

Orozco, Jan Arcy M. Group no. 4

Date Performed: Sept. 4, 2013 Date Submitted: Sept. 11, 2013

Rowel Allan A. Rocaberte Kevin Joshua S. Cala Instructors

Demonstration 12
Folded Antenna Elements
I. OBJECTIVES

To show that the drive point impedance of an antenna (or antenna element) can be altered by folding the element. Such alteration is often useful for the purpose of matching the driven point impedance to the feeder or other source of RF power. Fig. 1: Radiation is present horizontally in the folded dipole.
II. DISCUSSION OF THEORY

A folded dipole consists of a basic dipole with an added conductor connecting the two ends together to make a complete loop of wire or other conductor. As the ends appear to be folded, then the antenna is called folded dipole. One of the main reasons for using the folded dipole is because of the increase in feed impedance. If the conductors in the main dipole and the second or "fold" conductor are the same diameter, then it is found that there is a fourfold increase in the feed impedance. In free space, this gives an increase in feed impedance from 73 to around 300 ohms. Additionally the RF antenna has a wider bandwidth. When higher impedance feeders need to be used, or when the impedance of the dipole is reduced by factors such as parasitic elements, a folded dipole provides a significant increase in impedance level that enables the antenna to be matched more easily to the feeder available. The folded dipole has a flatter frequency response this enables it to be used over a wider bandwidth.
III. DATA & RESULTS

Fig. 2: The current is maximum at the near the center both of the driven dipole and of folded duplicate.

Fig. 3 There is no presence of radiation in the quarter-wave folded dipole due to the cancelation of the opposing current flowing in the two vertical elements.

Fig. 4: Shorting the one side of the folded antenna results to the presence of the radiation.

IV. CONCLUSION

In this experiment, the current of the folded antenna is halved and therefore requires a higher drive-point impedance. The power supplied to the folded antenna is evenly shared between the two sections which results to the increase in impedance. Because of this, when the folded antenna is compared with the standard dipole, the current in each conductor is reduced to a half. Folded antennas must be fed with high impedance. The initial configuration for a quarter wave dipole causes no radiation since the opposing waves cancel each other but radiation is emitted by the grounded quarter wave antenna when one side is shorted with both currents to travel in the same direction.