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Z - BW - Q - of Antennas PDF
Z - BW - Q - of Antennas PDF
Z - BW - Q - of Antennas PDF
4, APRIL 2005
Abstract—To address the need for fundamental universally valid and its relationship to are both more generally applicable and
definitions of exact bandwidth and quality factor ( ) of tuned an- more accurate than previous formulas. As part of the derivation
tennas, as well as the need for efficient accurate approximate for- of the relationship between bandwidth and , exact expressions
mulas for computing this bandwidth and , exact and approxi-
mate expressions are found for the bandwidth and of a gen- for the input impedance of the antenna and its derivative with re-
eral single-feed (one-port) lossy or lossless linear antenna tuned spect to frequency are found in terms of the fields of the antenna.
to resonance or antiresonance. The approximate expression de- The exact of a general lossy or lossless antenna is also re-ex-
rived for the exact bandwidth of a tuned antenna differs from pre- pressed in terms of two dispersion energies and the frequency
vious approximate expressions in that it is inversely proportional derivative of the input reactance of the antenna. The value of
to the magnitude 0 ( 0 ) of the frequency derivative of the input
impedance and, for not too large a bandwidth, it is nearly equal the total internal energy, as well as one of these dispersion en-
to the exact bandwidth of the tuned antenna at every frequency ergies, for an antenna with an asymmetric far-field magnitude
0 , that is, throughout antiresonant as well as resonant frequency pattern, and thus the value of for such an antenna, is shown
bands. It is also shown that an appropriately defined exact of to depend on the chosen position of the origin of the coordi-
a tuned lossy or lossless antenna is approximately proportional to nate system to which the fields of the antenna are referenced. A
0 ( 0 ) and thus this is approximately inversely proportional practical method is found to emerge naturally from the deriva-
to the bandwidth (for not too large a bandwidth) of a simply tuned
antenna at all frequencies. The exact of a tuned antenna is de- tions that removes this ambiguity from the definition of for a
fined in terms of average internal energies that emerge naturally general antenna.1 The validity and accuracy of the expressions
from Maxwell’s equations applied to the tuned antenna. These in- are confirmed by the numerical solutions to straight-wire and
ternal energies, which are similar but not identical to previously wire-loop, lossy and lossless tuned antennas, as well as to a Yagi
defined quality-factor energies, and the associated are proven
to increase without bound as the size of an antenna is decreased. antenna and a straight-wire antenna embedded in a frequency
Numerical solutions to thin straight-wire and wire-loop lossy and dependent dielectric material, over a wide enough range of fre-
lossless antennas, as well as to a Yagi antenna and a straight-wire quencies to cover several resonant and antiresonant frequency
antenna embedded in a lossy dispersive dielectric, confirm the ac- bands. The remainder of the paper, many of the results of which
curacy of the approximate expressions and the inverse relation- were first presented in [9], is organized as follows.
ship between the defined bandwidth and the defined over fre-
quency ranges that cover several resonant and antiresonant fre- Preliminary definitions required for the derivations of the ex-
quency bands. pressions for impedance, bandwidth, and of an antenna are
given in Section II.
Index Terms—Antennas, antiresonance, bandwidth, impedance,
quality factor, resonance. In Section III, the fractional conductance bandwidth and the
fractional matched voltage-standing-wave-ratio (VSWR) band-
width are defined and determined approximately for a general
I. INTRODUCTION tuned antenna in terms of the input resistance and magnitude of
the frequency derivative of the input impedance of the antenna.
T HE primary purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to define
a fundamental, universally applicable measure of band-
width of a tuned antenna and to derive a useful approximate
It is shown that the matched VSWR bandwidth is the more fun-
damental measure of bandwidth because, unlike the conduc-
expression for this bandwidth in terms of the antenna’s input tance bandwidth, it exists in general for all frequencies at which
impedance that holds at every frequency, that is, throughout the an antenna is tuned. (Throughout this paper, we are considering
entire antiresonant as well as resonant frequency ranges of the only the bandwidth relative to a change in the accepted power
antenna; and second, to define an exact antenna quality factor and not to any additional loss of bandwidth caused, for example,
independently of bandwidth, to derive an approximate expres- by a degradation of the far-field pattern of the antenna.)
sion for this exact , and to show that this is approximately In Section IV, the input impedance, its frequency derivative,
inversely proportional to the defined bandwidth. the internal energies, and the of a tuned antenna are given in
The average “internal” electric, magnetic, and magnetoelec- terms of the antenna fields, and the relationship between band-
tric energies that we use to define the exact of a linear an- width and is determined. In particular, the frequency deriva-
tenna are similar though not identical to those of previous au- tive of the input reactance is expressed in terms of integrals of
thors [1]–[8]. The approximate expression for the bandwidth the electric and magnetic fields of the tuned antenna. These in-
tegrals of the fields are then re-expressed in terms of internal
Manuscript received October 2, 2003; revised September 14, 2004. This work 1This ambiguity in the values of internal energy and Q engendered by sub-
was supported by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR). tracting the radiation-field energy of an antenna with an asymmetric far-field
The authors are with the Air Force Research Laboratory, Hanscom AFB, MA magnitude pattern is not mentioned or addressed in [1]–[8], probably because
01731 USA (e-mail: arthur.yaghjian@hanscom.af.mil). Q
these references concentrate on defining the of individual spherical multipoles
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2005.844443 which have far-field magnitude patterns that are symmetric about the origin.
(12)
(6) (14)
With the help of (14) we can determine various expressions defines what is commonly called the matched VSWR bandwidth.
for the total power accepted by the antenna We shall show that the matched VSWR bandwidth, unlike the
conductance bandwidth, is well-defined for all frequencies
at which the antenna is tuned to zero reactance.
A. Conductance Bandwidth
(15) The conductance bandwidth for an antenna tuned at a fre-
or quency is defined as the difference between the two frequen-
cies at which the power accepted by the antenna, excited by a
constant value of voltage , is a given fraction of the power
(16) accepted at the frequency . With the help of (9), the conduc-
tance at a frequency of an antenna tuned at the frequency
The superscript in (15) denotes the complex conjugate and can be written as
in (16) is the input conductance of the
antenna. The power accepted by the antenna equals the power (21)
dissipated by the antenna in the form of power radiated
by the antenna plus the power loss in the material of the We can immediately see from (21) that there is a problem with
antenna. Defining the radiation resistance of the antenna using conductance bandwidth, namely, that the derivative of
as and the loss resistance of the antenna as evaluated at equals
, we have (22)
and thus it is not zero at unless . This means that
in general the conductance will not reach a maximum at the fre-
(17) quency . Moreover, in antiresonant frequency ranges where
both the resistance and reactance of the antenna are changing
so that rapidly with frequency, the conductance may not possess a max-
imum and consequently the conductance bandwidth may not
(18) exist in these antiresonant frequency ranges. (As we shall show
The power radiated can also be expressed in terms of the far in Section III-B, the matched VSWR bandwidth does not suffer
fields of the antenna from these limitations.)
Well away from the antiresonant frequency ranges of most
antennas, we have is much smaller than
, the conductance will peak at a frequency much closer
to than the bandwidth, and a simple approximate expression
(19) for the conductance bandwidth can be found as follows.
Having tuned the antenna at so that , we
can find the frequency where by taking the
where is a surface in free space surrounding the antenna and frequency derivative of the expression for in (21) and
its power supply, the solid angle integration element equals setting it equal to zero to get
with being the usual
spherical coordinates of the position vector , and the complex
far electric field pattern is defined by (23)
(20) With , the functions and
their derivatives can be expanded in Taylor series about
with being the speed of light in free space. The
impedance of free space is denoted by in (19) and is the (24a)
unit normal out of . The radiation resistance is always equal (24b)
to or greater than zero because the power ra-
(24c)
diated by the antenna is always equal to or greater than zero
. Also, the loss resistance is equal to or greater (24d)
than zero if the material of the antenna is passive which can be substituted into (23) to obtain for small
.
In resonant frequency ranges well away from antireso- where use has been made of . Again, in resonant fre-
nant ranges, we can assume quency ranges we can assume that
so that (26) reduces to and, therefore, (32) yields
(27) (33)
(30)
(31)
YAGHJIAN AND BEST: IMPEDANCE, BANDWIDTH, AND OF ANTENNAS 1303
difference between the two frequencies on either side of at is chosen small enough). For half-power VSWR bandwidth,
which the VSWR equals a constant , or, equivalently, at which and .
the magnitude squared of the reflection coefficient A comparison of (41) with (34) reveals that under their stated
equals (the constant is assumed conditions of validity
chosen ), provided the characteristic impedance of
the feed line equals . Then the magnitude (42)
squared of the reflection coefficient can be found from (12) as
wherever the conductance bandwidth exists,
(36) namely outside the antiresonant frequency ranges. The matched
VSWR bandwidth has the distinct advantage over
Both and its derivative with respect to are zero at . the conductance bandwidth of existing at every
Consequently, has a minimum at for all values of tuned frequency (for small enough ), that is, within both
the frequency at which the antenna is tuned resonant and antiresonant fre-
and matched to the feed line . This means that quency ranges. Moreover, if and do not change
the matched VSWR bandwidth, , determined by greatly over the bandwidth (which can always be satisfied if
is chosen small enough), is reasonably well
(37) approximated at all tuned frequencies by the simple expression
(41) even in frequency bands where or are zero,
unlike the conductance bandwidth, exists at all frequencies close to zero, or negative (but not both and too
(for small enough ), that is, throughout both the antiresonant close to zero). As far as we know, (41) is a general result for
and resonant frequency ranges. antennas that has not been established previously.
Therefore, the matched VSWR bandwidth is a more funda- The approximate formula for bandwidth in (41) should be ap-
mental, universally applicable definition of bandwidth for a plied judiciously to antennas that are designed to have a combi-
general antenna than conductance bandwidth. nation of two or more natural resonances and antiresonances at
Bringing the denominator from the left-hand side of (37) to that are so close together that
the right-hand side and rearranging terms to remove the rapidly the curve of versus has closely spaced peaks
varying function from the denominator on the left-hand equal to unity at these frequen-
side of (37) produces cies. Then the half-power bandwidth , for example, may
extend over all these natural resonant and antiresonant frequen-
cies even though there will be a resonant peak in
at each natural resonant or antiresonant frequency that has
(38) its own bandwidth for some such that (say
). The formula in (41) approximates the bandwidth of
each of these individual minor resonant and antiresonant peaks
Expanding the left-hand side of (38) in a Taylor series about ,
with some that is less than .
we find
which holds for tuned antennas under the sufficient condi- A. Field Expressions for Accepted Power and Input Impedance
tions that and do not change greatly over the To obtain expressions for the input impedance of the
bandwidth (conditions that hold if or, equiv- antenna shown in Fig. 2 tuned at the frequency , apply the
alently, , which can always be satisfied if complex Poynting’s theorem [10, (1-54)] to the infinite volume
1304 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 53, NO. 4, APRIL 2005
outside the volume of the shielded power supply. The Throughout the derivations in Sections II and III, it is assumed
volume includes the volume of the antenna material that that the antennas are linear, that is, composed of materials gov-
lies to the right of the feed-line reference plane . The closed erned by linear constitutive relations that relate and to
surfaces of the volumes and have the feed-line reference and . With the most general linear, spatially nondispersive con-
plane in common. Therefore, the volume includes the stitutive relations
volume of the series tuning reactance . Assuming the in-
tegral of the Poynting’s vector is zero over the shielded surface (51)
of the power supply and using (13)–(14), we find
where , and are the permeability dyadic, the permit-
tivity dyadic, and the magnetoelectric dyadics, respectively, the
reactance in (49) and (50) of the antenna tuned at the frequency
can be written as
(43)
where, as in (17)
(52)
(44) and
(46)
(47)
(55)
which has a value equal to or less than unity. The usual elec-
tric and magnetic vectors are denoted by and , Since for all values of and in passive mate-
respectively, with , the vector being the cur- rial, (54) implies that a material is passive (lossy or lossless)
rent density. Since , we find from (43) that if and only if its associated Hermitian “loss” matrix is positive
semidefinite [14], [15], [16, Sec. 5.2], a property that can be ex-
pressed symbolically as
(48)
and (56)
(49)
In lossless material and the loss matrix is zero, that
is
Of course, the reactance of the antenna is equal to zero at the
tuned frequency , that is
(57)
For the simple isotropic constitutive relations sion for is derived in Appendix A (see (A.15)) by com-
bining Maxwell’s equations with the frequency derivative of
(58a) Maxwell’s equations to get
(58b)
(59)
(60) (64)
with The energy relations in Appendix B also reveal that the real parts
of the elements of lossless (in a frequency window about )
(66) constitutive parameters obey the inequalities
and
(70b)
(67a)
The inequalities in (70) and thus (69) can also be proven from
the Kramers-Kronig dispersion relations in a manner analo-
gously to the proofs in [15] and [19, Sec. 84]. The last part of
Appendix B proves that in a lossless medium, the left-hand
side of (69) equals the average reversible kinetic plus potential
energy of the charge carriers in a final time-harmonic field that
is built up gradually from a zero magnitude at .
(67b)
Using the terminology of Brillouin [20, p. 88] and Landau
et al. [19, p. 275] for our purposes, we shall refer to
(67c) , and as the average “internal”
magnetic, electric, and magnetoelectric energies of the tuned
antenna, respectively. They are finite and have dimensions of
energy, and have the far-field radiation energies sub-
tracted from them, and if they were the energies in quasistatic
fields in free space or nondispersive media, they would equal
the amounts of energy one could quasistatically extract from
these magnetic and electric fields. In reality, however, they are
(67d) not just quasistatic energies and, in addition, the antenna may
contain dispersive materials, that is, constitutive parameters
(67e)
that are strongly frequency dependent. Nonetheless, treating
, and as internal energies of the antenna in order
Note that the finite magnetic, electric, and magnetoelectric ener- to define a quality factor for the antenna, we shall find the
gies [ , and ] at any frequency can be satisfying result that provided the
defined by the formulas (67a)–(67c) evaluated at any frequency bandwidth of the antenna is narrow enough.
instead of . However, the formula in (52) for the reactance If in addition to the antenna being lossless in a frequency
at any frequency can generally only be rewritten in terms of window about , it is also nonradiating, (69) reduces (65)–(67)
these finite energies as to
(68)
the antenna as power loss and power radiated , re- is the total current flowing in the wire at the position
spectively. Unlike the power loss and power radiated (each of along the wire. As usual, the primes indicate differentiation
which cannot be negative), however, the sum of these “disper- with respect to frequency and the subscript means that
sion energies” can be negative as well as positive or zero and the frequency derivative is taken with the input current that
in (65) can be negative as well as positive or zero. There- feeds the antenna held constant (independent of frequency).
fore, the Foster reactance theorem, which says that for If the diameter or resistivity of the wire varies along the wire,
a one-port linear, lossless, passive network is always positive, will be a function of . If the current were uniform across
does not hold for antennas even if unless the antenna the wire as in a lumped circuit resistor carrying a current
is not only lossless but does not radiate, in which case (71) holds. , (75) is replaced by
(Because both and are missing from the expression for
in [5, eq. (43)], it is mistakenly concluded in [5] that the (76)
Foster reactance theorem holds at all frequencies for antennas
with .) The formula in (75) is used in Section VI to numerically evaluate
With the simple isotropic constitutive relations in (58), the for lossy wire antennas, and (76) is applied in Appendix D
energy expressions in (67a)–(67d) become to lumped resistors in series and parallel RLC circuits. Within
resonant frequency ranges , the tuned antenna
can usually be approximated by a series RLC circuit. For that
approximation, in (76) and since , it follows
that within resonant frequency ranges.
Because
(72a)
, and , the energies ,
and include the derivative terms with ,
and . In [9] we defined
and the associated in (78) below without these
(72b) derivative terms. However, in order to define a in (78) that
is proportional to the inverse of the matched VSWR fractional
(72c)
bandwidth given approximately in (41), the energy must
(72d) equal when , and are
negligible. It then follows from (64) that
must be defined as shown in (67a)–(67c)
The inequalities in (70), which hold in material that is lossless with the derivative terms included. For example, at a natural
in a frequency window about , reduce to resonant frequency of an antenna that can be modeled by
(73) an RLC series circuit with negligible but and
nonnegligible (because the inductor and capacitor is
regardless, incidentally, of whether the values of are filled with a material that has a nonnegligible and ,
positive or negative. respectively)
The far-field dispersion energy given by (67e) can be
evaluated from the antenna’s complex far electric field pattern
defined in (20). The material-loss dispersion energy
given by (67d) or (72d) requires a knowledge of the electric (77a)
and magnetic fields in the material of the antenna. For thin-wire
lossy antennas with , where is the con- Similarly, at a natural antiresonant frequency of an antenna
ductivity of the wire material and , the dispersion energy that can be modeled by an RLC parallel circuit with
in (72d) reduces to negligible but and nonnegligible
(74)
If the cross section of the wire is circular and the “skin depth” (77b)
of the current density is much smaller than the diameter of
the wire, (74) further reduces to For the parallel RLC circuit, and
. If were defined without the
(75) and terms included in , then for these RLC
antennas would not include the derivatives of and ,
and the would not closely approximate the inverse of
under the approximation , . The need to include the derivative terms in the
where is the current density at the surface of the wire and used to define is confirmed in the Numerical Re-
is the radial distance from the center of the wire. In (75), sults Section VI-D for a straight-wire antenna embedded in a
is the resistance per unit length of wire and frequency dependent dielectric material (see Figs. 18 and 19).
1308 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 53, NO. 4, APRIL 2005
C. Definition and Exact Expressions of Q D. Approximate Expression for and Its Relationship to
The quality factor for an antenna tuned to have zero Bandwidth
reactance at the frequency can now be defined We can estimate the total dispersion energy,
as , in (80) to get an approximate expression for
that can be immediately related to the bandwidth of the tuned
(78) antenna. Away from antiresonant frequency ranges of tuned
antennas, and usually . Fur-
thermore, for the sake of evaluating , we assume the power
Absolute value signs are placed about in the definition
loss and power radiated can both be approximated by ohmic
of in (78) to allow for hypothetical antennas (mentioned
loss in a resistor of a series RLC circuit, where R can be a func-
in the previous subsection) with ; see in Fig. 19.
tion of . Evaluating in Appendix D for
Formulas for in terms of fields are given by means of
such a series RLC circuit reveals that it’s value is small enough
(66)–(67) and formulas for the power accepted by the antenna
to make the second term on the right-hand side of (80) negli-
are given by means of (15)–(19) and (55). In particular,
gible compared to the first. Therefore, away from antiresonant
and can be written from (65) as
frequency ranges, that is, within resonant frequency ranges
(79) (82)
(83)
(80)
At an antiresonant frequency , we assume that tuned an-
The expressions on the right-hand sides of (78) and (80) are tennas can be approximated by a tuning inductor or capac-
very different in form, yet they are exact and thus produce the itor in series with a parallel RLC circuit. An evaluation of
same value of . In Section VI, the formula (80) rather in Appendix D for such a tuned parallel
than (78) is used to compute the exact values of for various RLC circuit reveals that
antennas because it is easier to numerically compute
for these antennas than to numerically evaluate the integrals in
(67a)–(67c) that define used in (78).
Especially note that the in (80) differs from both the (84)
conventional formula for the quality factor [1]
so that
(81) (85)
and from Rhodes’s formula in (35) above, namely, Inserting (85) into (80) yields
, because of the term
. (Rhodes [13] assumes (mistakenly) (86)
that the right-hand side of (80) is not a valid expression for
because it does not, in general, equal . Fante [3] which, combined with (83), holds for all .
assumes that (80) is a valid expression for if , Comparing the approximate formula for the quality factor
and as well as are negligible.) The formula in in (86) with the approximate formula for the matched
(81) is commonly used to determine the quality factor and the VSWR fractional bandwidth in (41), one finds
bandwidth ( for half-power conductance bandwidth, as
in (34), and for half-power matched VSWR bandwidth)
of tuned antennas. In general, neither in (81) nor
accurately approximates the exact in (78) and
(80) of tuned antennas in antiresonant frequency ranges. (87)
It is proven in Appendix C that the of an antenna in-
creases extremely rapidly as the maximum dimension of the provided and do not change greatly over the band-
effective source region is decreased while maintaining the fre- width of the antenna (assumptions that hold if the bandwidth
quency, efficiency, and far-field pattern. This implies that su- is narrow enough.) As noted in (35), Rhodes [13] defines
pergain above a few dB is impractical. It is also shown in Ap- by the expression in (87) with replaced by
pendix C that the quality factors determined by previous authors (and ). Such an expression does not produce an accurate
[1]–[3] are lower bounds for our defined applied to electri- approximation to and bandwidth in antiresonant frequency
cally small antennas with nondispersive and . bands (except at antiresonant frequencies with ).
YAGHJIAN AND BEST: IMPEDANCE, BANDWIDTH, AND OF ANTENNAS 1309
In concluding this section, it is emphasized that not every far-field pattern of the antenna, can be removed by the simple
tuned antenna has to obey the inverse relationship between procedure given in the last paragraph of Section IV-E.
bandwidth and given in (87). The derivation of (41) and (86)
assumes that the antenna is linear, passive, and tuned by a linear E. Determination of the Ideal Location for the Origin of the
passive circuit. If the antenna contains nonlinear or active ma- Coordinates and the Associated
terials and tuning elements, the bandwidth could conceivably The values of , and may depend on the choice
be appreciably widened without decreasing commensurately of the origin of the coordinates to which the far-field pattern is
the internal energy and (as defined in (78)) of the antenna. referenced. To prove this, let the origin of the coordinate system
Then, of course, (41), (86), and the inverse relationship between be displaced by an amount with respect to the antenna. Then
bandwidth and would not necessarily hold. the far-field pattern (at frequency ) with respect to this new
Also, the derivation of (86) approximates by coordinate system is given by
in resonant frequency ranges. Consequently, the ap- (88)
proximation (86) could be inaccurate in a resonant frequency
range if the resistivity of the antenna changed rapidly enough and, thus
with frequency to make . In general, the
derivation of (86) breaks down if or in the (89)
RLC series and parallel circuit antenna models of Appendix D Inserting and into the last integral in (64), that is, into
become too large and one would not expect the exact to be a , shows that the change in this integral caused by a displace-
highly accurate approximation to the inverse of the exact band- ment of the origin of the coordinates is given by
width. In all our numerical simulations to date with practical
antenna models, however, the approximations in (86) and (87) (90)
have exhibited high accuracy throughout both resonant and
antiresonant frequency ranges.
which has a magnitude that is less than or equal to
Nonetheless, the derivation of (86) in Appendix D that uses . If the magnitude of the far-field pat-
series and parallel RLC circuits to model antennas in their tern is symmetric about the origin, then the change given in
resonant and antiresonant frequency ranges, respectively, has a (90) is zero, that is, the value of the last integral in (64), and
serious limitation. In this derivation, the radiation resistance of thus the square-bracketed energy in (64), is independent of the
the antenna is lumped into the antenna’s resistive loss so that origin of the coordinate system.
the term is replaced by a contribution to . As discussed If (for example, if is symmetric about
in Section IV-B, the value of for antennas with asymmetric the origin), the choice of the origin of the coordinate system is
far-field magnitude patterns depends on the position of the irrelevant. If , then the radiation-field energy
origin of the coordinate system. Therefore, in replacing (second integral in the square brackets of (64)) that subtracts
with a contribution to , which is independent of the origin of from the total-field energy (first integral in the square brackets
the coordinates, it is implicitly assumed that the antenna’s of (64)) may either overcompensate or undercompensate for the
is either independent of the origin or that the origin is chosen to radiation energy if the origin is too far from the center of the
make of the antenna approximately equal to the of the source region of the antenna. Thus, it is reasonable, though not
RLC circuit that is used in Appendix D to model the antenna. necessarily ideal, to choose the origin of the coordinates at the
In the following Section IV-E, we shall give a practical method center of the imaginary spherical surface that circumscribes the
for determining approximately such an ideal location for the source region of the antenna. Nonetheless, we ultimately have to
origin of the coordinates at each tuned frequency . Moreover, live with the fact that our defined reactive and internal energies
a simpler alternative method is given in the last paragraph of of an antenna (like that of previous authors [1]–[8]) and thus its
Section IV-E for obtaining an approximate value of the defined in (78) depends to some degree on the choice of the
associated with the ideal origin at each tuned frequency . origin of the coordinate system relative to the antenna (unless
Kuester [22] has pointed out that an RLC circuit can be con- ). This nonuniqueness in reactive energy and
structed with an arbitrary value of by separating the resistor of an antenna arises because of the need to subtract the infi-
from the inductor and capacitor by a length of transmission line nite energy in the radiation fields from the infinite energy in the
whose characteristic impedance is equal to the resistance of the total fields of the antenna to obtain finite values of reactive and
resistor that terminates this line. The input impedance and band- internal energies, which turn out to depend on the point to which
width of such an RLC circuit is independent of the length of this the far field is referenced if . The above deriva-
transmission line, whereas the internal energy and as defined tion shows that the amount that changes with a shift
by (78) or (80) will increase with the length of this transmis- in the origin is less than , where is the efficiency
sion line. Increases in internal energy and without a change of the antenna [see (47)] and .
in the input impedance can also occur using “surplus” capaci- The quality factor is most often determined for antennas
tors and inductors [23, p. 176]. These spurious contributions to whose maximum linear dimensions are on the order of a wave-
the exact that create discrepancies between the exact value length or less because it is these relatively small antennas that
of in (78) or (80) and the approximate value in (86), as well usually determine the bandwidth of a one-port antenna system.
as the ambiguity in with respect to the chosen origin for the For example, the bandwidth of a reflector antenna or an array
1310 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 53, NO. 4, APRIL 2005
fed by one element is usually determined mainly by the band- Thus, one can find the position of the origin that makes
width of the feed element. Choosing the origin near the center in (94) equal to in (94). To find
of the dominant radiating sources of an antenna that is not much numerically from (94), the value of must be
larger than a wavelength across involves an ambiguity of no determined. This can be done either by directly computing the
more than about a wavelength and, thus, an ambiguity in of derivative of the input reactance of the antenna or by indirectly
no more than about . Nonetheless, it computing the derivative of from the fields of the antenna
would be desirable to determine an ideal criterion for choosing in expressions (52) or (59).
the origin of the coordinate system. Fortunately, the results of Once the origins and are found at the natural reso-
Sections IV-C and IV-D reveal such a criterion that we can be nant and antiresonant frequencies and of the untuned
used to specify a practical way to choose a reasonable position antenna, one can linearly extrapolate between the positions of
of the origin for each tuned frequency . these origins to obtain approximate values of the ideal posi-
As discussed in the previous subsection, it is assumed in the tion of the origin at every frequency. [For tuned frequencies
derivation of (86) and thus in the derivation of the first equation between 0 and the lowest natural resonant or antiresonant fre-
in (87), namely quency , that is, for where is the smallest
frequency (either a resonant or antiresonant frequency) that sat-
(91) isfies , one can use (with equal to if is
a natural resonant frequency or if is a natural antireso-
nant frequency).] In Section VI-C, (93) and (94) are used to nu-
that either , so that is independent of the merically evaluate the ideal origin positions and for
location of the origin, or if then the location a Yagi antenna at two natural resonant and two natural antires-
of the origin is chosen to produce a that maintains the rela- onant frequencies. The numerical results show that with these
tionship (86) and thus (91). If the location of the origin is chosen origins, the approximation in (86) and (91) hold with consid-
such that (86) remains valid when , then (86) erable accuracy throughout the resonant and antiresonant fre-
and (80) imply quency bands.
We emphasize that this procedure for finding the ideal loca-
tion of the origin for determining an unambiguous exact of an-
tennas with is given for the sake of academic
(92) completeness and for comparing the approximate formulas in
(87) with an exact . The formulas in (87) are the ones that are
At a natural resonant frequency of an untuned antenna convenient and useful in numerical practice provided it is pos-
where and , we sible to directly compute . Even if an unambiguous exact
have shown (see Sections IV-B and IV-D) that is desired, it can be found from (78) or (80) using any posi-
. Therefore, in order for (86) and (91) to hold at a nat- tion of the origin if . If ,a
ural resonant frequency when , (92) implies reasonable exact can be found from (78) or (80) by choosing
that should be . From (67e) it is seen that this the origin as the center of the sphere that circumscribes the dom-
means that at a natural resonant frequency one should choose inant sources of the antenna.
the position of the origin of the coordinate system to make Once this origin of the circumscribing sphere is chosen, an
even better exact Q can be obtained by adjusting the values of
(93) to equal at the natural resonant
and antiresonant frequencies (that is, at or ).
At other frequencies, the values of can be adjusted by an
If we know the far field pattern of the antenna, it is straight- amount equal to the linear extrapolation of the adjustments at
forward to evaluate the integral in (93) for different positions the adjacent natural resonant and antiresonant frequencies. For
of the origin to find an origin that makes , the linear extrapolation can be formed between
at a natural resonant frequency . (Note from an adjustment of zero at and the adjustment at .
(90) that any vector perpendicular to can be used This simple procedure can be used independently of the value
to shift without changing the value of . Also, the value of to define an exact that will reasonably com-
of at a natural resonant frequency is usually neg- pensate for both a nonideal origin and spurious contributions
ligible.) to mentioned in the last paragraph of Section IV-D. In Sec-
At a natural antiresonant frequency of the untuned an- tion VI-C, this simple procedure is applied to the Yagi antenna
tenna where and , we mentioned in the previous paragraph to obtain an alternative
also have (so that ) exact curve that agrees reasonably well with the exact Q curve
and (92) along with (67e) imply obtained by shifting the origin of the coordinates.
assumed that the values of the real parts of the permeability and of these tuned antennas, close agreement is found between the
permittivity of the antenna material are greater numerically computed exact and approximate formulas for the
than or equal to zero. For low-loss materials (73) shows that bandwidth and quality factor over the full range of frequencies.
and even if and Moreover, the inverse relationship (87) between bandwidth and
are negative [25]–[28]. Thus, it seems reasonable to assume quality factor is confirmed for each of the tuned antennas at
that the defined by (78) with the given in (66) every frequency.
and (72a)–(72c) remains valid for low-loss materials with Using the computed impedance data from NEC, the exact
negative and . The approximate formulas for and matched VSWR bandwidth is obtained by tuning the antenna
in (87) and the inverse relationship between them at the desired operating frequency with a lossless series in-
may become less accurate the faster and change ductor or capacitor. A lossless inductor is used to tune the
over the bandwidth of the antenna, regardless of whether the antenna’s initial reactance to zero
values of and are positive or negative (assuming the if is less than zero, and a lossless capac-
amount of this material is large enough to significantly itor is used to tune the antenna’s initial reactance to zero
affect the bandwidth of the antenna). if is greater than
For lossy materials, and can be less than zero. Once the antenna is tuned at the desired operating fre-
zero near antiresonances of the material where the loss is very quency, the VSWR of the tuned antenna is determined for all fre-
large, and it is conceivable that or could be quencies under the condition that the characteristic feed-line
negative enough in the antenna material to produce a negative impedance is equal to the antenna’s tuned impedance at
value of (but not a negative value of , which is , that is, . The exact matched
defined in terms of ). However, the antiresonances in VSWR bandwidth about the tuned frequency is computed for
lossy media that produce negative values of or a specific value of the VSWR by finding the frequency range
would likely have such narrow bandwidths or high loss that they in which the VSWR is less than or equal to . As de-
would make the antenna impractical if they contributed signifi- fined in Section III-B, the fractional matched VSWR bandwidth
cantly to and ; see Section VI-D. is then
Finally, consider tuning an electrically small capacitive or with . To compare the inverse of the exact
inductive antenna, that is, an antenna with , with matched VSWR bandwidth with the antenna’s exact and ap-
a low-loss series inductor or capacitor (having reactance ) proximate quality factor, the exact matched VSWR bandwidth
filled with either a or material that can be positive or neg- is converted to an equivalent quality factor defined by
ative. Since (73) implies from (71) that , the tuned an- [see (87)]
tenna has a reactance derivative
. It follows from (41), therefore, that the bandwidth of an
(95)
electrically small capacitive or inductive antenna cannot be dra-
matically increased by tuning with a negative capacitance or in-
ductance instead of a positive inductance or capacitance, respec- In our numerical examples, the bandwidth VSWR is given by
tively, as long as the capacitors and inductors are linear, passive, .
low-loss circuit elements. Tretyakov et al. [28] conclude that the In addition to determining the inverse of the exact matched
bandwidths of radiating electric or magnetic line currents cannot VSWR bandwidth , the exact of the antenna is
be increased by covering them with electrically thin lossless dis- found using (80). The first term on the right-hand side of
persive materials having negative permeability or negative per- (80), , is evaluated directly from the
mittivity, respectively. antenna’s feed-point impedance with evaluated
from (8). The second term on the right-hand side of (80),
, is evaluated numer-
VI. NUMERICAL RESULTS
ically from the antenna’s current, conductivity, and complex
In this section, the expressions for the exact bandwidth and far-field pattern.
quality factor as well as for the approximate bandwidth and The far-field dispersion energy is evaluated directly
quality factor derived in Sections III–V are evaluated numeri- from (67e). The frequency derivative and integral in (67e) are
cally for representative lossless and lossy tuned antennas. These evaluated numerically for each observation angle and frequency
numerical solutions are determined over a wide enough range as necessary to accurately compute the frequency derivative
of frequencies to allow the antenna to vary in size from a small with a finite difference. These quantities are calculated with
fraction of a wavelength to several wavelengths across. The an- the input (feed) current held at a constant value independent
tennas considered here are the thin straight-wire antenna, the of frequency. This is accomplished in NEC by feeding the
circular wire-loop antenna, a three-element directive Yagi an- antenna with a voltage source having a voltage equal to the
tenna, and a straight-wire antenna embedded in a frequency de- antenna’s input impedance at each frequency, thereby setting
pendent dielectric material. The numerical analysis of all but the the current to 1 A at all frequencies. For the lossy antennas, the
last of these antennas is performed using the Numerical Elec- material-loss dispersion energy was evaluated from
tromagnetics Code, Version 4 (NEC) [29], which is capable of (75).
determining the current, input impedance, and far-fields of these The approximate conventional quality factor is given
antennas over a wide range of operating frequencies. For each in (81) and we shall designate the newly derived approximate
1312 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 53, NO. 4, APRIL 2005
(96)
A. Bandwidth and Quality Factor of the Lossless Straight-Wire Fig. 5. Input impedance to higher frequencies of the center-fed, untuned,
Antenna lossless straight-wire antenna having a total length of 1 m and a wire diameter
of 1 mm.
The first antenna we consider is the lossless, center-fed,
straight-wire antenna that has an overall length of 1 m and a
wire diameter of 1 mm. The NEC-calculated impedance of Beyond the antenna’s first natural resonant and antiresonant
this untuned antenna is given in Fig. 3 for a frequency range frequency ranges, the antenna’s input impedance will undergo
covering the first natural resonance and antiresonance. Using successive alternating regions of natural resonances and antires-
the calculated feed-point impedance of the corresponding tuned onances, as seen in Fig. 5 for a frequency range of 450 MHz
antenna, the exact matched VSWR bandwidth was calculated through 2000 MHz. At frequencies near the natural resonances,
for a bandwidth VSWR of . the antenna’s input resistance is relatively low in value, while at
A comparison of the exact , and for the tuned frequencies near the natural antiresonances, it is relatively high
lossless straight-wire antenna is shown in Fig. 4, which demon- in value. A comparison of the exact , and for the
strates excellent agreement between the exact , the equivalent tuned antenna over this frequency range is given in Fig. 6, where
obtained from the exact bandwidth, and the approximate it can be seen that the values of exact , and remain
quality factor obtained from the frequency derivative of the in excellent agreement over the full frequency range. Fig. 6 re-
antenna’s input impedance. These latter three quality factors are veals again, however, that the conventional approximate quality
determined in significantly different manners, yet they remain factor does not provide an accurate estimate of the exact
in excellent agreement throughout the entire frequency range. or inverse bandwidth in antiresonant frequency ranges.
Fig. 4 also reveals that the conventional approximation to Considering the form of the exact expression in (80), the
the quality factor, determined from the frequency derivative of reasonable agreement that exists between the exact and the
the antenna’s reactance, does not provide a reasonable estimate conventional approximation at low frequencies and in res-
of the exact or the inverse of the antenna’s exact matched onant frequency ranges, and the disagreement between the exact
VSWR bandwidth for frequencies about the natural an- and in antiresonant frequency ranges, we can conclude
tiresonance. the following. At very low frequencies, where the antenna is
YAGHJIAN AND BEST: IMPEDANCE, BANDWIDTH, AND OF ANTENNAS 1313
Q
Fig. 6. Comparison of the ; Q ; Q , and Q (1.5:1 matched VSWR Fig. 8. Input impedance of the untuned, lossless circular-loop antenna with a
bandwidth) for the center-fed, tuned, lossless straight-wire antenna over a radius of .348 m and a wire diameter of 1 mm.
wider range of frequencies.
Fig. 10. Comparison of different methods for computing the quality factor Fig. 11. Quality factors (as approximated by Q ) for the tuned, lossless and
in the first antiresonant region of the tuned, lossy circular-loop antenna with a lossy straight-wire (wire diameter equal to .5 mm) antennas compared to the
radius of .348 m and a wire diameter of .5 mm. Collin-Rothschild lower bound for an electric-dipole antenna.
Fig. 14. Input impedance of the untuned, lossless, 3-element Yagi antenna.
Q
Fig. 17. Comparison of the ; Q , and Q (1.5:1 matched VSWR Fig. 18. Input impedance of the center-fed, untuned, lossless straight-wire
bandwidth) for the tuned, lossless, 3-element Yagi antenna with the coordinate antenna having a total length of 1 m and a wire diameter of 1 mm, and embedded
origin placed at the center of the driven element, but with the exact Q at in a lossy dispersive dielectric.
each frequency determined by interpolating between its values at the natural
resonant and antiresonant frequencies.
scribed in Section VI-A in a lossy dispersive dielectric material
with Lorentz permittivity given by
compares the exact computed with these shifted origins to
and . As one might expect, the major improvement in accu-
racy of the shifted-origin exact in Fig. 16 over the feed-ele-
ment-origin exact in Fig. 15 occurs near the first natural res- (98)
onance of the Yagi antenna.
The drawback of this shifted-origin technique is the large for through the first resonant frequency of the antenna, where
computer time required to calculate the frequency derivative of the electric susceptibility constant , the offset relative
the far field of the antenna at each natural resonant and antireso- permittivity constant , the loss constant , and
nant frequency as the origin of the coordinates is shifted by trial the Lorentz antiresonant frequency Hz.
and error to obtain the proper value of . As an alternative For frequencies MHz, we can model this embedded
to this shifted-origin technique, we can first compute an initial antenna by a constant inductance ( henrys) in
exact using an origin near the center of the imaginary sphere series with a frequency dependent “radiation” resistance (
that circumscribes the antenna. This exact will be calculated Ohms) and a lossy capacitance (
knowing that an ambiguity exists associated with the specified farads, Ohms). The
location of the coordinate origin. However, the ambiguity can impedance and of the untuned embedded antenna
be corrected at the natural resonant and antiresonant frequen- is shown in Fig. 18, which agrees closely with the impedance
cies knowing at each of these natural frequencies. If the (not shown) computed with the NEC code. The efficiency
differences between the exact calculated with the origin near of this antenna is less than 5% for frequencies less than
the center of the circumscribing sphere and are taken as 80 MHz and thus it is not a practical antenna throughout about
corrections at the natural frequencies, we can interpolate these the first half of the frequency range shown in Fig. 18.
corrections between the natural resonant and antiresonant fre- Fig. 19 demonstrates the close agreement between the inverse
quencies to arrive at a full set of corrections for all frequen- of the exact bandwidth and the approximation for the
cies. This allows us to compute a corrected exact without inverse of the bandwidth of the tuned antenna, as well as the
having to determine the far fields and their frequency derivatives failure in the antiresonant region of the conventional expression
at each frequency for different coordinate origins. This interpo- for the quality factor of the tuned antenna. In the frequency
lation technique was applied to the values of the exact initially range from about 30 to 70 MHz, the exact does not agree
calculated with the center of the feed element as the reference well with the inverse of the exact bandwidth (or with the
coordinate origin. Fig. 17 shows that the resulting interpolated approximation ) because the antenna material is both highly
exact compares favorably with and as well as with lossy and dispersive—so dispersive, in fact, that the value of
the shifted-origin exact shown in Fig. 16. can become negative to make equal to zero at
frequencies near 40 MHz and 60 MHz. Thus, as pointed out in
D. Bandwidth and Quality Factor of a Straight-Wire Section IV-D, one would not expect the exact to be a highly
Embedded in a Lossy Dispersive Dielectric accurate approximation (in this frequency range) to the inverse
Our definitions of internal energies in (67a)–(67c) or (72), and of the exact bandwidth. Most noteworthy in Fig. 19 is the quality
thus include terms involving the frequency derivatives of the factor where
constitutive parameters. To confirm that these derivative terms
should indeed be included as part of the energy used to define (99)
, we embed the lossless, center-fed, straight-wire antenna de-
YAGHJIAN AND BEST: IMPEDANCE, BANDWIDTH, AND OF ANTENNAS 1317
Integrate (A.5) over the volume between the shielded where we have used the fact that the real part of the last integrand
power supply and a sphere of radius that surrounds the an- in (A.10) is zero for in the part of that lies outside the
tenna system, apply the divergence theorem, and take the limit antenna material (that is, outside ).
as to get Lastly, we evaluate the integral in (A.10) in terms of the
far electric field pattern defined in (20) by expanding
and in a Wilcox series [31]
(A.11)
(A.6)
The left-hand side of (A.6) results from (13)–(14) and the fact (A.12)
mentioned in Section II that one of the basis fields in the feed
line of the antenna can always be made independent of fre- and by taking the derivative with respect to frequency of in
quency. This implies from the frequency derivative of (14) that (A.11) to get
(A.13)
(A.8)
(A.10) (A.16)
YAGHJIAN AND BEST: IMPEDANCE, BANDWIDTH, AND OF ANTENNAS 1319
and some time are not the same carriers that reside at at an-
other time ; 2) the kinetic energy of the carriers can be trans-
ferred through collisions with each other and with the material
lattice; and 3) the total electromagnetic force-power on classical
moving charges and dipoles includes the self electromagnetic
force-power on these charges and dipoles and thus the total elec-
tromagnetic force-power cannot, in general, be equated to the
time rate of change of the mechanical (kinetic plus potential)
momentum-energy of these particles [34, Sec. 5.1].
(A.17) In a spatially nondispersive macroscopic distribution of ,
and , the charges and dipoles in each differential volume ele-
ment are assumed unconnected to the charges and dipoles in
where in (A.17) we have used the asymptotic property,
all the other differential volume elements. Thus, the self electro-
, of the fields of vector
magnetic force-power approaches zero faster than [12, p. 46]
spherical modes for each degree
and reason 3) is not an issue. Moreover, the energy radiated by
and order . Equating the terms on the right-hand sides of
a volume element of macroscopic sources approaches zero
(A.16) and (A.17) proves that
faster than . If, in addition, the conduction current is zero,
for the total fields of the antenna.
we can assume a macroscopic model of the medium in which the
carriers are “bound” by infinitesimal restoring “springs” (which
APPENDIX B can be lossy) to a rigid lattice such that the carrier drift is negli-
PROOF THAT LOSSLESS, SUSCEPTIBILITY AND INTERNAL gible. Furthermore, we can assume a model in which the bound
ENERGIES ARE carriers do not collide (or collide only with a rigid lattice) and,
The power per unit volume supplied to a macroscopic thus, reason 2) does not apply. Consequently, for a macroscopic
distribution of time dependent current and polariza- distribution of bound and in a passive, spatially nondisper-
tion densities by electromagnetic fields sive medium, represents the reversible kinetic
is given by [12, eq. (2.174) ] and potential energy plus the irreversible frictional energy loss
(in the “springs”) per unit volume at for a model with col-
lisionless carriers bound by lossy “springs”, under the assump-
(B.1) tion that this energy is zero in the remote past ).
Since begins at a value of zero and equals
or, since and (for this model) the total reversible energy change plus frictional
energy loss per unit volume of the carriers, can
never be negative, that is, in this passive,
spatially nondispersive medium of bound carriers and we can
(B.2) conclude from (B.3) that
In a passive lossless medium (57) holds and can be rewritten Choosing such that reduces (B.9) to
as . The energy inequality in (B.4)3 can be rewritten in
terms of and as (after integration by parts)
(B.10)
(B.7)
(B.12)
where and are arbitrary constant real vectors, is the
unit step function, and is a decay parameter that will an inequality that holds for all values of , and .
later approach zero. Multiplying by and taking the Fourier Letting shows that
transform of (B.7), applying the dyadic constitutive relations,
expanding for lossless media in the complex -plane about
, and then taking the inverse Fourier transform produces
as (B.13)
(B.14)
(B.8)
which expands to (69) in the main text with
wherein primes indicate differentiation with respect to and the given in (B.5), and in (B.6b). For and ,
subscripts “ ” and “ ” indicate the real and imaginary parts of a the inequality in (B.14) reduces to the inequality given in [36,
complex variable. Use has been made of with p. 81].
being a symmetric dyadic and being an antisym- Averaging (B.9) by integrating from to , dividing
metric dyadic in lossless media. Inserting , its by , and letting also produces the result (B.13) and
time derivative, and from (B.7)–(B.8) into (B.6a); performing (B.14). With no dispersion, the left-hand side of (B.14) would
the integrations from to ; and letting produces reduce to , the per unit volume “average
reactive energy” minus the “average energy stored in the fields”,
so that can be viewed as the per unit volume
increase from to in the kinetic and potential
energy of the carriers as the sinusoidal fields are built up in a
lossless medium from an amplitude of zero at to their
final amplitude at .
APPENDIX C
PROOF THAT INCREASES RAPIDLY WITH DECREASING
(B.9) ANTENNA SIZE
3A passive lossless medium with constitutive relations F =
1 G at every From (78) and (47) can be written as
frequency is a spatially nondispersive linear medium that can be modeled by
bound collisionless carriers. Although the actual medium may not conform to
this idealized model, it is sufficient that the frequency dependent constitutive
parameters can be obtained with the idealized model for (B.4) to apply. (C.1)
YAGHJIAN AND BEST: IMPEDANCE, BANDWIDTH, AND OF ANTENNAS 1321
(C.3)
(C.8)
(C.10)
(C.5)
(C.11)
(C.2)
1322 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 53, NO. 4, APRIL 2005
, the quality factors and increase and thus the larger of is the greatest lower
extremely fast. To prove this, truncate the infinite summations bound for our defined . In other words, the lower bound
over to a maximum value that is large enough to make the far on quality factor given by Fante [3] is indeed the lower bound to
fields produced by the remaining spherical modes negligible, our defined exact for electrically small antennas with nondis-
so that (C.8) can be written as4 persive and . Moreover, for electrically small
antennas, the lower bounds on quality factor given by Chu [1]
and Collin and Rothschild [2] are approximately equal to the
lower bound of Fante [3]. For specified fields outside a closed
surface , the reaches its lower bound by generating the
fields outside with equivalent surface currents on that
(C.12) produce zero fields inside except for the magnetic or elec-
tric fields within a tuning inductor or capacitor depending on
whether is greater than or less than , respec-
As becomes less than , the functions and tively [40]. If , as in the case of equal energy
in (C.9) increase in value extremely rapidly. There- electric and magnetic dipole fields outside a sphere, no tuning
fore, as the radius of the antenna is reduced to a value smaller inductor or capacitor would be required inside .
than , the quality factors and become
much greater than 1, provided the efficiency and the coefficients APPENDIX D
and stay the same, as they (the coefficients) will, if EVALUATION OF FROM (80) FOR RLC SERIES- AND
the frequency and far-field pattern of the antenna is kept the PARALLEL-CIRCUIT ANTENNA MODELS
same. Moreover, the rate of increase of and
with decreasing grows rapidly with . In view of (C.4), To determine an approximate expression for the in (80)
this implies that , as well as , becomes for a tuned antenna at a resonant or antiresonant frequency ,
enormously large as the radius of the antenna is reduced below we shall lump the radiation resistance of the antenna into a se-
the value of (assuming does not grow negatively ries RLC circuit for a resonance or into a parallel RLC circuit in
at the same rate). The enormously high reactive fields with series with a tuning inductor or capacitor for an an-
rapid spatial variation responsible for the enormously large tiresonance. (Adding the tuning capacitor or inductor explicitly
prevent the practical realization of supergain above a to the series RLC circuit model for a resonance is unnecessary
few dB. because the resulting circuit is still an RLC series circuit. Un-
Most antennas do not have extremely high reactive fields and like the ordinary RLC series circuit, however, the resistance is
. In addition, an antenna is probably unnecessarily allowed to be a function of frequency.) Although the inductance
large in size if , because the same far-field pattern and capacitance in these RLC circuits are assumed independent
could be obtained by another antenna with a much smaller ra- of frequency for the antenna tuned at , this still allows a re-
dius without significantly increasing the reactive actance that is frequency dependent.
fields. Hypothetically, one could conceive of an extremely over- Since the radiation resistance of the tuned antenna is lumped
sized tuned antenna with so much greater than that into the RLC circuit resistance, and the radiated fields of an RLC
in (C.4) would be less than . circuit are negligible, in (80) is negligible for these circuit
This, of course, implies that is negative. It is difficult, models. Therefore, in (80) is given approximately by
however, to imagine that an antenna with could be
practical even if the antenna had a that was highly neg- (D.1)
ative because of the dominance of lossy materials with negative
internal energy density; see Section VI-D. Thus the task of this Appendix reduces to evaluating the right-
Lastly, we consider antennas with nondispersive and hand side of (D.1) for tuned series and parallel RLC circuits.
, so that with Approximating a tuned antenna at a resonant frequency
and . Then we can write by a series RLC circuit with elements
, and , we have
(D.2)
(C.13)
The current is flowing through and (76) becomes
For electrically small antennas , and simply
, so that
(D.3)
Next approximate the tuned antenna at an antiresonant fre- which when substituted into (D.1) yields
quency with the tuning reactance of an
inductor or capacitor in series with a parallel RLC circuit with
elements , and . For this tuned parallel RLC circuit,
we find
(D.16)
(D.5)
after inserting from (D.9). A comparison of (D.16) and
(D.10) reveals the relationship
(D.6)
(D.17)
(D.7)
Especially note from (D.9), (D.10), and (D.17) that
where is the antiresonant frequency of the
untuned parallel RLC circuit. The “approximately equal” signs (D.18)
hold under the condition that ( will
suffice). Taking the derivative of these expressions with respect
except for , where
to frequency and setting produces under the same con-
is the quality factor of the untuned par-
dition
allel RLC circuit, that is, the quality factor at the antiresonant
frequency of the untuned antenna. For most antennas .
(D.8)
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Discussions with Prof. E. F. Kuester of the University of Col-
orado and Prof. S. A. Tretyakov of Helsinki University of Tech-
(D.9) nology, as well as two anonymous reviews, led to important ad-
ditions and changes to this paper.
From (D.8) and (D.9) we find
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1324 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 53, NO. 4, APRIL 2005
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Antenna-Antenna Interactions. Washington, DC: U.S. Government ceived the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical
Printing Office, 1981. engineering from Brown University, Providence, RI,
[17] D. R. Rhodes, “A reactance theorem,” Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A., vol. 353, in 1964, 1966, and 1969.
pp. 1–10, Feb. 1977. During the spring semester of 1967, he taught
[18] C. A. Levis, “A reactance theorem for antennas,” Proc. IRE, vol. 45, pp. mathematics at Tougaloo College, MS. After re-
1128–1134, Aug. 1957. ceiving the Ph.D. degree, he taught mathematics
[19] L. D. Landau, E. M. Lifshitz, and L. P. Pitaevskii, Electrodynamics of and physics for a year at Hampton University, VA,
Continuous Media, 2nd ed. Oxford. U.K.: Butterworth-Heinenann, and in 1971 he joined the research staff of the
1984. Electromagnetics Division of the National Institute
[20] L. Brillouin, Wave Propagation and Group Velocity. New York: Aca- of Standards and Technology (NIST), Boulder, CO.
demic Press, 1960. He transferred in 1983 to the Electromagnetics Directorate of the Air Force
[21] R. E. Collin, Foundations for Microwave Engineering. New York: Mc- Research Laboratory (AFRL), Hanscom AFB, MA, where he was employed
Graw-Hill, 1966. as a Research Scientist until 1996. In 1989, he took an eight-month leave of
[22] E. F. Kuester, private communication, 2003. absence to accept a Visiting Professorship in the Electromagnetics Institute of
[23] S. Karni, Network Theory: Analysis and Synthesis. Boston, MA: Allyn the Technical University of Denmark. He presently works as an independent
and Bacon, 1966. Consultant in electromagnetics. His research in electromagnetics has led to the
[24] I. M. Polishchuk, “The Q-factor and energy center of antennas,” Radio determination of electromagnetic fields in continuous media, the development
Eng. Elect. Phys., vol. 28, no. 6, pp. 1–5, 1983. of exact, numerical, and high-frequency methods for predicting and measuring
[25] V. G. Veselago, “The electrodynamics of substances with simultaneous the near and far fields of antennas and scatterers, and the reformulation of the
negative values of and ,” Soviet Physics Uspekhi, vol. 10, pp. classical equations of motion of charged particles.
509–514, Jan.–Feb. 1968. He is a Member of Sigma Xi. He has received Best Paper Awards from the
[26] D. R. Smith, W. J. Padilla, D. C. Vier, S. C. Nemet-Nasser, and S. IEEE, NIST, and AFRL. He has served as an Associate Editor for the IEEE and
Schultz, “Composite medium with simultaneously negative perme- International Scientific Radio Union (URSI).
ability and permittivity,” Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 84, pp. 4184–4187, May
1, 2000.
[27] R. W. Ziolkowski and A. D. Kipple, “Application of double negative
materials to increase the power radiated by electrically small antennas,”
IEEE Trans. Antenna Propagat., vol. 51, no. 10, pp. 2626–2640, Oct.
2003.
[28] S. A. Tretyakov, S. I. Maslovski, A. A. Sochaya, and C. R. Simovski,
“The influence of complex material coverings on the quality factor of
simple radiating systems,” IEEE Trans. Antenna Propagat., vol. 53, no. Steven R. Best (S’82–M’83–SM’98) was born in
3, pp. 965–970, Mar. 2005. Saint John, NB, Canada. He received the B.Sc.Eng.
[29] G. J. Burke, Numerical Electromagnetics Code—NEC-4 Method of Mo- and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the
ments: Lawrence Livermore Natl. Lab., Jan. 1992, UCRL-MA-109 338 University of New Brunswick, in 1983 and 1988,
Pt. 1. respectively.
[30] S. R. Best and A. D. Yaghjian, “The lower bounds on Q for lossy electric He has over 17 years of experience in business
and magnetic dipole antennas,” IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., management and antenna design engineering in
vol. 3, pp. 314–316, Dec. 2004. both military and commercial markets. In August
[31] C. H. Wilcox, “An expansion theorem for electromagnetic fields,” Com- 1987, he joined Chu Associates, Incorporated, El
munications on Pure and Appl. Math., vol. 9, pp. 115–134, 1956. Cajon, CA, as a Senior Design Engineer where he
[32] J. A. Stratton, Electromagnetic Theory. New York: McGraw-Hill, worked on the design of numerous HF, VHF, and
1941. UHF antennas for government, military, and commercial applications. In 1990,
[33] J. D. Jackson, Classical Electrodynamics, 3rd ed. New York: John he was appointed to the position of General Manager and in 1992, he was
Wiley, 1999. appointed to the position of Vice President and General Manager. In December
[34] A. D. Yaghjian, Relativistic Dynamics of a Charged Sphere: Updating 1993, he cofounded Parisi Antenna Systems, Waltham, MA. In June 1996, he
the Lorentz-Abraham Model. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1992. joined Cushcraft Corporation, Manchester, NH, as Director of Engineering and
[35] A. Tonning, “Energy density in continuous electromagnetic media,” IRE was subsequently appointed to the position of company President in August
Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. AP-8, pp. 428–434, Jul. 1960. 1997. He is currently with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL/SNHA)
[36] L. B. Felsen and N. Marcuvitz, Radiation and Scattering of at Hanscom AFB, MA, where his areas of interest include electrically small
Waves. New York: IEEE Press, 1994. antennas, wideband radiating elements, conformal antennas, phased arrays,
[37] A. D. Yaghjian, “Sampling criteria for resonant antennas and scatterers,” and communication antennas. He is the author or coauthor of over 80 papers in
J. Appl. Phys., vol. 79, pp. 7474–7482, 1996. various journal, conference and industry publications. He frequently presents
[38] Y. L. Luke, Integrals of Bessel Functions. New York: McGraw-Hill, a three-day short course on antennas and propagation for wireless commu-
1962. nications and he is the author of a CD-ROM series on antennas for wireless
[39] M. Abramowitz and I. A Stegun, Handbook of Mathematical Func- communication systems.
tions. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964. Dr. Best is a Member of Sigma Xi and the Applied Computational Electro-
[40] Antenna Engineering Handbook, 2nd ed., R. C. Johnson and H. Jasik, magnetics Society (ACES). He is an Associate Editor for the IEEE ANTENNAS
Eds., McGraw-Hill, New York, 1984. H. A. Wheeler, Small Antennas AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS and a Vice-Chair for the IEEE Boston
Sec. 6–5. Section.