Yagi-Uda Antenna

Yagi-Uda Antenna is an antenna that is well known for its high gain and directivity. A Yagi-Uda antenna is
formed by a combination of 3 major elements i.e., driven element, reflector and directors. These are basically
designed to operate in very high and ultra-high frequency bands and offers the operating frequency ranging
between 30 MHz to 3 GHz.

Construction

A Yagi-Uda antenna has 3 main elements that combinedly form its structure.
These 3 major elements are driven element which is generally a half-wave
folded dipole, a reflector and directors. The structure contains one driven
element and a reflector while directors can be more than one. The figure
below represents the structure of the Yagi-Uda antenna:

Basically, the arrangement is said to be an array of active and parasitic elements. The dipole generally a
metallic rod acts as the active element as external feeding is provided to it using transmission lines. While
reflector and directors are the parasitic elements of the structure.

The parasitic elements are also metallic rods placed parallelly in the line-of-sight orientation with respect to
the driven element.

It is noteworthy here that no external excitation is provided to the parasitic elements. However, when the
dipole is excited using a transmission line then the current that flows through the driven element induces
voltages in the parasitic elements.

All these elements are mounted on a center rod, that acts as horizontal support. The reflector is present at
one of the ends of the metallic rod and has length around, 5% greater than the length of the driven element.
While the directors are almost 5% shorter than the driven element (i.e., λ/2 at the resonant frequency) and
are placed at the other side of the dipole as these are used to provide maximum directivity to the antenna.
So, for 3 element aerial, the lengths of the elements can be considered as:

Components

There are mainly three basic components of Yagi antenna which are:

Driven element – The driven element provides the necessary current required for radiating electromagnetic
energy into space and is usually the same length as a half wavelength at the intended operating frequency.
All other elements are electrical multiples of half a wavelength long so that they resonate at the same
frequency as the driven element. The extra length or multiple of half wavelengths is achieved by inserting
an inductance or capacitance into each parasitic element, which has the effect of increasing their electrical
length without changing their physical length.

Reflector – The length of the reflector is generally 5% more than the driven element. Mostly, each Yagi Uda
antenna consists of one reflector element which is at the back of the driven element which means at the
sideways from where the maximum sensitivity happens.

Also, reflectors that are at the back of the driven element show no observable difference to the performance
of the antenna. Whereas some designs employ reflectors with a reflecting plate or a sequence of parallel
rods that resemble a reflecting plate. With this, there will be minimal increment in the device performance
thus lessening the radiation level. Furthermore, this design pattern reduces the range of interference.

Director – Even when there is a single director or more directors, the length of directors is shorter than the
driven component. The positioning of directors will be in front of the driven component which means in a
direction that has a high level of sensitivity.

The number of directors determines how many lobes appear on the radiation pattern of this antenna. The
more lobes there are, the narrower they become, which means that they can focus on one particular
direction.

Working of Yagi-Uda Antenna

We know that external excitation is directly provided to the

active element of the arrangement i.e., the dipole. The flow of
current through the active element induces a voltage in the
parasitic elements that cause current to flow through it.

The element having a length greater than λ/2 i.e., the reflector, shows inductive characteristic, therefore, the
current in the reflector lags the induced voltage. Whereas, the one shorter than the half-wave dipole i.e., the
director is capacitive. So, the current flowing through it leads the voltage.

As we know that director is placed in front of the driven elements, so, these directors add the field of the
driven element in the direction away from it. When multiple directors are placed in the arrangement then
each director will provide excitation to the next one.

Also, the reflector in the opposite direction as that of the director when accurately placed adds the field in
the direction towards the driven element. This is done in order to reduce the losses due to the back radiated
wave as much as possible. In order to get the additional gain, multiple directors can be used in the direction
of the beam.

Basically, the induced voltage and the current flowing due to the induced voltage in the element varies with
the spacing between the active and parasitic elements along with the reactance associated with the
elements.
It is to be noted here that with the increase in distance between driven element and director, there will be
more need for capacitive reactance in order to provide accurate phasing to the current in the director. Thus,
the length of the director is kept small to get the capacity reactance.

So, we can compile all the above-discussed factors as: Initially, excitation to the driven element is provided
using feed lines. This causes the emission of radiation from reflector towards the director. Moreover, a
portion of the emitted radiation excites the parasitic elements, that further re-radiate the radiations.

Characteristics

• A Yagi-Uda antenna is said to be beam antenna if it is only 3 elements array i.e., a driven and reflector
and only a single director.
• It offers moderate unidirectional directivity.
• The gain offered by the Yagi-Uda antenna is around 8 dB with front to back ratio of approximately 20
dB.
• In order to increase the directivity, more elements can be added in the array.
• Another name to this antenna is super directive antenna due to its high directive gain.
• It is frequency sensitive thus is a fixed frequency device.

Advantages

• Yagi-Uda antenna offers very high gain.

• It possesses a highly directional characteristic because of the use of directors.
• It is a low-cost antenna.
• Yagi-Uda antenna shows suitability towards high-frequency operations.
• It is light in weight and feeding mechanism is also simple.
• It is power efficient.
• Along with all the above-defined advantages, it also offers ease of construction and handling.

Disadvantages

• These antennas are highly affected by atmospheric conditions.

• Noise is the major factor that disturbs the overall performance of the antenna.
• Gain is limited
• Bandwidth is limited
• The gain of antenna increases with reflector and director Folded Dipole Antenna

Applications of Yagi-Uda Antenna

These antennas are widely used in the field of TV signal reception, as it has excellent receiving ability. Even
astronomical and defence related applications make use of Yagi-Uda Antenna. Also, radio astronomy utilizes
these antennas.