Introduction

In the 1890s, there were only a few antennas in the world. These rudimentary devices were primarly a part of experiments that demonstrated the transmission of electromagnetic waves. By World War II, antennas had become so ubiquitous that their use had transformed the lives of the average person via radio and television reception. The number of antennas in the United States was on the order of one per household, representing growth rivaling the auto industry during the same period. By the early 21st century, thanks in large part to mobile phones, the average person now carries one or more antennas on them wherever they go (cell phones can have multiple antennas, if GPS is used, for instance). This significant rate of growth is not likely to slow, as wireless communication systems become a larger part of everyday life. In addition, the strong growth in RFID devices suggests that the number of antennas in use may increase to one antenna per object in the world (product, container, pet, banana, toy, cd, etc.). This number would dwarf the number of antennas in use today. Hence, learning a little (or a large amount) about of antennas couldn't hurt, and will contribute to one's overall understanding of the modern world.

Antenna Theory History

What is the origin of antennas? I'm ruling out compasses, because while they in some sense receive a magnetic field, its not an electromagnetic field. Ben Franklin's kite experiment wasn't quite an antenna, as that captured lightning discharge, which is a direct current path where the energy is not transferred independent of the medium it travels. The human eye of course receives high frequency electromagnetic waves (light, to the layman). Technically the eye could be classified as an antenna; however since it can't transmit waves, it is really a sensor, so I'll exclude that as well. The first experiments that involved the coupling of electricity and magnetism and showed a definitive relationship was that done by Faraday somewhere around the 1930s. He slid a magnetic around the coils of a wire attached to a galvanometer. In moving the magnet, he was in effect creating a time-varying magnetic field, which as a result (from Maxwell's Equations), must have had a time-varying electric field. The coil acted as a loop antenna and received the electromagnetic radiation, which was received (detected) by the galvanometer -

the work of an antenna. Interestingly, the concept of electromagnetic waves had not even been thought up at this point.

A painting of Michael Faraday. Being a great experimentalist, he naturally dabbled in chemistry, shown here. Heinrich Hertz developed a wireless communication system in which he forced an electrical spark to occur in the gap of a dipole antenna. He used a loop antenna as a receiver, and observed a similar disturbance. This was 1886. By 1901, Marconi was sending information across the atlantic. For a transmit antenna, he used several vertical wires attached to the ground. Across the atlantic, the receive antenna was a 200 meter wire held up by a kite [1]. In 1906, Columbia University had an Experimental Wireless Station where they used a transmitting aerial cage. This was a cage made up of wires and suspended in the air, resembling a cage [2]. A rough outline of some major antennas and their discovery/fabrication dates are listed: Yagi-Uda Antenna, 1920s Horn antennas, 1939. Interesting, the early antenna literature discussed waveguides as "hollow metal pipes". Antenna Arrays, 1940s Parabolic Reflectors, late 1940s, early 1950s? Just a guess. Patch Antennas, 1970s.

 PIFA, 1980s. Current research on antenna involves metamaterials (materials that have engineered dielectric and magnetic constants, that can be simultaneously negative, allowing for interesting properties like a negative index of refraction). Current research focuses on making antennas smaller, particularly in communications for personal wireless communication devices (e.g. cell phones). A lot of work is being performed on numerical modeling of antennas, so that their properties can be predicted before they are built and tested.

A rough outline of some major antennas1. Yagi-Uda AntennaThe Yagi-Uda antenna or Yagi is one of the most brilliant antenna designs. It is simple to construct and has a high gain, typically greater than 10 dB. These antennas typically operate in the HF to UHF bands (about 3 MHz to 3 GHz), although their bandwidth is typically small, on the order of a few percent of the center frequency. You are probably familiar with this antenna, as they sit on top of roofs everywhere. An example of a Yagi-Uda antenna is shown below.

The Yagi antenna was invented in Japan, with results first published in 1926. The work was originally done by Shintaro Uda, but published in Japanese. The work was presented for the first time in English by Yagi (who was either Uda's professor or colleague, my sources are conflicting), who went to America and gave the first English talks on the antenna, which led to its widespread use. Hence, even though the antenna is often called a Yagi antenna, Uda probably invented it. A picture of Professor Yagi with a Yagi-Uda antenna is shown below.

In the next section, we'll explain the principles of the Yagi-Uda antenna.

Wire Antennas

Antenna TypesThe Dipole Antenna1-Short Dipole 2-Dipole Antenna 3-Half-Wave Dipole 4-Broadband Dipoles 5-Monopole 6-Folded Dipole 7-Small Loop

Microstrip Antennas
1-Rectangular Microstrip (Patch) Antenna 2-Shorting Pins: Quarter-Wavelength Microstrips and PIFAs

3-Corner Reflector

Reflector Antennas
1-Parabolic Reflector (Dish Antenna)

Travelling Wave Antennas

1-Helical Antenna 2-Yagi-Uda Antenna

Aperture Antennas
1-Slot Antenna 2-Slotted Waveguide Antenna 3-Horn Antenna

The Short Dipole Antenna

The short dipole antenna is the simplest of all antennas. It is simply an opencircuited wire, fed at its center as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Short dipole antenna of length L. The words "short" or "small" in antenna engineering always imply "relative to a wavelength". So the absolute size of the above dipole does not matter, only the size of the wire relative to the wavelength of the frequency of operation. Typically, a dipole is short if its length is less than a tenth of a wavelength:

If the antenna is oriented along the z-axis with the center of the dipole at z=0, then the current distribution on a thin, short dipole is given by:

The current distribution is plotted in Figure 2. Note that this is the amplitude of the current distribution; it is oscillating in time sinusoidally at frequency f.

Figure 2. Current distribution along a short dipole. The fields radiated from this antenna in the far field are given by:

The above equations can be broken down and understood somewhat intuitively. First, note that in the far-field, only the and fields are nonzero. Further, these fields are orthogonal and in-phase. Further, the fields are perpendicular to the direction of propagation, which is always in the direction (away from the antenna). Also, the ratio of the E-field to the H-field is given by (the characteristic impedance of free space). This indicates that in the far-field region the fields are propagating like a plane-wave. Second, the fields die off as 1/r, which indicates the power falls of as

Third, the fields are proportional to L, indicated a longer dipole will radiate more power. This is true as long as increasing the length does not cause the short dipole assumption to become invalid. Also, the fields are proportional to the current amplitude power). The exponential term: , which should make sense (more current, more

describes the phase-variation of the wave versus distance. Note also that the fields are oscillating in time at a frequency f in addition to the above spatial variation. Finally, the spatial variation of the fields as a function of direction from the antenna are given by . For a vertical antenna oriented along the z-axis, the radiation will be maximum in the x-y plane. Theoretically, there is no radiation along the z-axis far from the antenna. In the next section further properties of the short dipole will be discussed.

The Dipole AntennaIn this section, the dipole antenna with a very thin radius is considered. The dipole is similar to the short dipole except it is not required to be small compared to the wavelength (of the frequency the antenna is operating at). For a dipole antenna of length L oriented along the z-axis and centered at z=0, the current flows in the z-direction with amplitude which closely follows the following function:

Note that this current is also oscillating in time sinusoidally at frequency f. The current distributions for a quarter-wavelength (left) and full-wavelength (right) dipoles are given in Figure 1. Note that the peak value of the current is not reached along the dipole unless the length is greater than half a wavelength.

Figure 1. Current distributions on finite-length dipoles. Before examining the fields radiated by a dipole, consider the input impedance of a dipole as a function of its length, plotted in Figure 2 below. Note that the input impedance is specified as Z=R + jX, where R is the resistance and X is the reactance.

Figure 2. Input impedance as a function of the length (L) of a dipole antenna. Note that for very small dipoles, the input impedance is capacitive, which means the impedance is dominated by a negative reactance value (and a relatively small real impedance or resistance). As the dipole gets larger, the input resistance increases, along with the reactance. At slightly less than 0.5

the antenna has zero imaginary component to the impedance (reactance X=0), and the antenna is said to be resonant. If the dipole antenna's length becomes close to one wavelength, the input impedance becomes infinite. This wild change in input impedance can be understood by studying high frequency transmission line theory. As a simpler explanation, consider the one wavelength dipole shown in Figure 1. If a voltage is applied to the terminals on the right antenna in Figure 1, the current distribution will be as shown. Since the current at the terminals is zero, the input impedance (given by Z=V/I) will necessarily be infinite. Consequently, infinite impedance occurs whenever the dipole is an integer multiple of a wavelength.