Antennas

Related wiki page: Feedlines, Capacity Hats, Antenna Design, Gain, Bands, SWR, harmonics, Front-to-back ratio Electromagnetic Waves

Antennas are electrical circuits designed to facilitate the transmission and/or reception of electromagnetic radiation.

Antennas are specifically designed to transmit/receive as much electromagnetic radiation as possible, whereas most circuits are designed to emit/detect as little as possible. However, even a dummy load will emit a small amount of electromagnetic energy when radio-frequency oscillations are applied to it.

Antenna Size
Optimized antennas will have dimensions of the same order as the wavelength of operation. A balanced antenna will typically be about a half-wavelength long, and an unbalanced antenna such as a vertical will typically be about a quarter-wavelength long. It is possible to shorten antennas drastically at the cost of efficiency. See antenna loading for more discussion.

Theory of Antennas
In terms of their construction, antennas are RLC circuits in which resistance, inductance and capacitance are distributed along a conductor, rather than being concentrated in a particular component such as an inductance in an inductor.

The "ideal" antenna will be resonant for the frequency it is used at. In practical terms, this is impossible unless only a limited number of frequencies are used all the time.

Hence antenna design is a compromise, but good results can be achieved if we understand the notion of harmonics.

Antenna Types
Simple Antennas:

Dipole

Loop

Omnidirectional

Random Wire

Vertical

Wire

Complex Antennas:

Beam

DDRR

Dish or Parabola

Log Periodic (LPDA)

Quad

Yagi

Specialized Antennas:

DF - Direction Finding

Mobile

Panel

Portable

Understanding Antennas
UNDERSTANDING ANTENNAS FOR THE NON-TECHNICAL HAM