MEANING

A three-element Yagi-Uda antenna used for amateur radio. The longer reflectorelement (left), the driven element (center), and the shorter director (right) each have a socalled trap (parallel LC circuit) inserted along their conductors on each side, allowing the antenna to be used at two different frequency bands. A Yagi-Uda array, commonly known simply as a Yagi antenna, is a directional antennaconsisting of a driven element (typically a dipole or folded dipole) and additional parasitic elements(usually a socalled reflector and one or more directors). The name stems from it's inventors, as the Yagi-Uda array was invented in 1926 by Shintaro Uda of Tohoku Imperial University, Japan, with a lesser role played by his colleague Hidetsugu Yagi. However the "Yagi" name has become more familiar with the name of Uda often omitted. The reflector element is slightly longer (typically 5% longer) than the driven dipole, whereas the so-called directors are a little bit shorter. This design achieves a very substantial increase in the antenna's directionality and gain compared to a simple dipole.[1] Highly directional antennas such as the Yagi-Uda are commonly referred to as "beam antennas" due to their high gain. However the Yagi-Uda design only achieves this high gain over a rather narrow bandwidth, making it more useful for various communications bands (including amateur radio) but less suitable for traditional radio and television broadcast bands. Amateur radiooperators ("hams") frequently employ these for communication on HF, VHF, and UHF bands, often constructing such antennas themselves ("homebrewing"), leading to a quantity of technical papers and software. Wideband antennas used for VHF/UHF broadcast bands include the lower-gain log-periodic dipole array, which is often confused with the Yagi-Uda array due to its superficially similar appearance. That design along with other phased arrays have electrical connections on each element, whereas the Yagi-Uda design operates on the basis of electromagnetic interaction between the "parasitic" elements and the one driven (dipole) element.

COMPUTATION
While the above qualitative explanation is useful for understanding how parasitic elements can enhance the driven elements radiation in one direction at the expense of the other, the assumptions used are quite inaccurate. Since the so-called reflector, the longer parasitic element, has a current whose phase lags that of the driven element, one would expect the directivity to be in the direction of the reflector, opposite of the actual directional pattern of the Yagi-Uda antenna. In fact that would be the case were we to construct a phased array with rather closely spaced elements all driven by voltages in phase, as we posited. However these elements are not driven as such but receive their energy from the field created by the driven element, so we will find almost the opposite to be true. For now, consider that the parasitic element is also of length /2. Again looking at the parasitic element as a dipole which has been shorted at the feedpoint, we can see that if the parasitic element were to respond to the driven element with an open-circuit feedpoint voltage in phase with that applied to the driven element (which we'll assume for now) then the reflected wave from the short circuit would induce a current 180 degrees out of phase with the current in the driven element. This would tend to cancel the radiation of the driven element. However due to the reactance caused by the length difference, the phase lag of the current in the reflector, added to this 180 degree lag, results in a phase advance, and vice versa for the director. Thus the directivity of the array indeed is in the direction towards the director.

Illustration of forward gain of a two element Yagi-Uda array using only a driven element (left) and a director (right). The wave (green) from the driven element excites a current in the passive director which reradiates a wave (black) having a particular phase shift (see explanation in text). The addition of these waves (bottom) is increased in the forward direction, but leads to cancellation in the reverse direction.

Mutual impedance between parallel

dipoles not staggered as a function of spacing.

Curves Re and Im are the resistive and reactive parts of the mutual impedance. Note that at zero spacing we obtain the self-impedance of a half-wave dipole, 73+j43 ohms. One must take into account an additional phase delay due to the finite distance between the elements which further delays the phase of the currents in both the directors and reflector(s). The case of a Yagi-Uda array using just a driven element and a director is illustrated in the accompanying diagram taking all of these effects into account. The wave generated by the driven element (green) propagates in both the forward and reverse directions (as well as other directions, not shown). The director receives that wave slightly delayed in time (amounting to a phase delay of about 35 degrees), and generating a current that would be out of phase with the driven element (thus an additional 180 degree phase shift), but which is furtheradvanced in phase (by about 70 degrees) due to the director's shorter length. In the forward direction the net effect is a wave emitted by the director (black) which is about 110 degrees retarded with respect to that from the driven element (green), in this particular design. These waves combine

to produce the net forward wave (bottom, right) with an amplitude slightly larger than the individual waves. In the reverse direction, on the other hand, the additional delay of the wave from the director (black) due to the spacing between the two elements (about 35 degrees of phase delay) causes it to be about 180 degrees out of phase with the wave from the driven element (green). The net effect of these two waves, when added (bottom, left), is almost complete cancellation. The combination of the director's position and shorter length has thus obtained a unidirectional rather than the bidirectional response of the driven (half wave dipole) element alone. A full analysis of such a system requires computing the mutual impedancesbetween the dipole elements[3] which implicitly takes into account the propagation delay due to the finite spacing between elements. We model element number j as having a feedpoint at the center with a voltage Vj and a current Ij flowing into it. Just considering two such elements we can write the voltage at each feedpoint in terms of the currents using the mutual impedances Zij: V1 = Z11I1 + Z12I2 V2 = Z21I1 + Z22I2 Z11 and Z22 are simply the ordinary driving point impedances of a dipole, thus 73+j43 ohms for a half wave element (or purely resistive for one slightly shorter, as is usually desired for the driven element). Due to the differences in the elements' lengths Z11 and Z22 have a substantially different reactive component. Due to reciprocity we know that Z21 = Z12. Now the difficult computation is in determining that mutual impedance Z21 which requires a numerical solution. This has been computed for two exact half-wave dipole elements at various spacings in the accompanying graph. The solution of the system then is as follows. Let the driven element be designated 1 so that V1 and I1 are the voltage and current supplied by the transmitter. The parasitic element is designated 2, and since it is shorted at its "feedpoint" we can write that V2 =0. Using the above relationships, then, we can solve for I2 in terms of I1:0 = V2 = Z21I1 + Z22I2

 This is the current induced in the parasitic element due to the current I1 in the driven element. We can also solve for the voltage V1 at the feedpoint of the driven element using the earlier equation:

where we have substituted Z12 = Z21. The ratio of voltage to current at this point is the driving point impedance Zdp of the 2-element Yagi:

With only the driven element present the driving point impedance would have simply been Z11, but has now been modified by the presence of the parasitic element. And now knowing the phase (and amplitude) of I2 in relation to I1 as computed above allows us to determine the radiation pattern (gain as a function of direction) due to the currents flowing in these two elements. Solution of such an antenna with more than 2 elements proceeds along the same lines, setting each Vj=0 for all but the driven element, and solving for the currents in each element (and the voltage V1 at the feedpoint).

DRAWING

The second dipole in the Yagi-Uda array is the only driven element with applied input/output source feed, all the others interact by mutual coupling since receive and reradiate electromagnetic energy; they act as parasitic elements by induced current. It is assumed that an antenna is a passive reciprocal device, then may used either for transmission or for reception of the electromagnetic energy: this well applies to Yagi-Uda also. The simplest or minimal Yagi-Uda antenna has at least two parasitic elements behind the Driven Element (DE); the antenna with only one parasitic element as Reflector element (Ref) is generally called Yagi antenna. This happens when the electrical length of the parasitic element is greater than the driven element.

If the electrical length of the parasitic element is shorter than the driven element, the radiation pattern reversed and the parasitic element became a Director (D) always in the two-elements of the Yagi antenna.

FAQ's: what does the antenna difference between Yagi-Uda and Yagi? A television set antenna, FM and amateurs radio beam, a lot of WiFi and satellite antennas are not the Yagi? Answer: Yagi-Uda is the correct complete name for any antenna with three or more elements in the array. Yagi is the name for the two elements, a driven element and the reflector, or the driven element and one director alone. Yagi is well-accepted term for any linear end-fire array like the Yagi-Uda defined above. The television antenna set, FM and amateur radio antennas commonly named Yagi are really Yagi-Uda antenna when three or more elements in the system array. The two terms seems to be equivalent in the common practical use. Yagi-Uda should be the historically correct name.

YAGI-UDA ANTENNA