Application of Half Wave Dipole Antenna
1st Fahimuddin Qureshi 2nd Kamran Sohail
Electrical Engineering Department
Univeroty of Central Pubjab
Lahore, Pakistan
fahimuddin q ureshi@yahoo.com
Abstract—The dipole antenna or dipole aerial is one of the
most important and commonly used types of RF antenna. It is
widely used on its own, and it is also incorporated into many
other RF antenna designs where it forms the driven element for
the antenna. In this paper, an attempt has been made to design
a half wave dipole antenna operating at a certain frequency. A
dipole antenna approximately one-half wavelength long is the half
wave dipole antenna. The antenna is made to resonate at the 1.0
GHz frequency. Ansys HFSS Software is used for the simulation
and design calculations of the half wave dipole antennas. The
return loss, gain and radiation pattern are evaluated.
Index Terms—Half wave-dipole Antenna; Return Loss; Gain;
HFSS.
I. I NTRODUCTION
A dipole antenna approximately one-half wavelength long is
the half wave dipole antenna. The antenna is made to resonate
at different frequencies depending upon the application/usage.
A Half wave Dipole antenna is an antenna that can be made
of a simple wire, with a center-fed driven element. It consists
of two metal conductors of rod or wire having half the
length of wavelength, in line with each other, with a small
space between them. The radio frequency voltage is applied
to the antenna at the center, between the two conductors
which causes flow of current. The flow of current and the
voltages in the antenna cause emission of the radio signal.
The geometry of this antenna, which is a cylindrical structure,
is fully described by five parameters, including length, radius,
feeding gap, frequency and wavelength [1].
Half wave dipole antennas also known as Hertz antenna [3]
can be used for different potential applications and a brief
account of the same will be discussed in this section.
A half wave dipole antenna can be introduced having
operating range between 1.8 GHz and 2.1 GHz for GSM
application, which is one of the most important and widely
used standard for mobile. Like wise, a half wave Dipole
antenna designed on 4.0, 10.2 and 17.4 GHz (Tri Bands)
wireless communication can be used for live online Game,
real-time video streaming and mobile electronic devices high
speed data sharing applications [2]. Currently, world necessity
toward energy is increasing as the time passed by. People have
tried to find numerous ways to conserve the energy and to
fulfill amount of energy needed by the world. One of them
is RF energy harvesting which is also preferred as power
harvesting or energy scavenging. In RF energy harvesting,
receiver antenna is one important element which is used to
Electrical Engineering Department
University of Central Pubjab
Lahore, Pakistan
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receive RF signals from the surrounding environment. So a
bowtie dipole antenna is basically configured from a half-
wavelength dipole antenna. Since its configuration is slightly
different with the common dipole antenna, the characteristic
of bowtie dipole antenna will not only depend on the length
of half-wavelength arm, but also on the angles (α) of antenna
arms [4]. The half-wave dipole antennas provide high pene-
tration depth and relatively uniform transmit fields and hence,
are one of the favorites in Ultrahigh field MRI. The design
includes a high dielectric material coating around the length
of each conductor. The dipole length primarily determines
the resonant frequency of a dipole antenna; therefore, it is
difficult to tune small half-wave dipole antennas less than 50
cm at 300MHz. So, a solution to this problem is determined
by coating a high dielectric material around the conductors
and thus with the help of this we can tune smaller half-
wave dipole antennas at 300MHz without meandering the
dipole conductors [5]. Moreover, Photo conductive folded half-
wavelength dipole antennas have also been introduced and
demonstrated successfully for high power THz applications
in the field of spectroscopy, sensing, and imaging [6].
Half wave antennas have also some application in the
field of medicine. Like, half-wavelength inspired FDA, which
radiates at 2.45 GHz, with an area of 0.653 λ0 × 0.163 λ0, is
installed on the chest of patients for monitoring the respiratory
rate as an indication for Covid-19 detection [7].
II. D ESIGN OF D IPOLE A NTENNA
In this section will calculate design parameter of half-
wave dipole antenna. The designed proposed center frequency
is at 2.0GHz. Based on the operating frequency, the total
wavelength will be calculated and subsequently arm length
of each rod will be half of the wavelength. The wavelength L
will be calculated by the following equation.
λ = c/f (1)
Where;
λ = W avelength
c = Speedof Light = 3 × 108 m/s
f = OperatingF requency = 1.0GHz
Using Eq1. Wavelength (Λ) can be calculated as; also be observed that bandwidth of designed half wave dipole
antenna is between 0.88GHz to 0.97GHz.
3 × 108
λ= = 300mm
1 × 1012

Thus the total length of the dipole antenna will be 150mm and
two arm length will be half of total wavelength i.e 75mm. Feed
Gap Distance will be taken 1mm while the radius of dipole
shall be 1mm. The Dipole Antenna is shown with dimensions
in Fig. 1.
:
TABLE I: Calculated and Assumed Parameters of
Half Wave Dipole Antenna
Parameter Value
Frequency Resonate 2.0GHz
Wavelength λ 150mm
Fig. 2: Return Loss from Ansys HFSS at Designed Operating
Arm Length of the Dipole 75mm Frequency
Feed Gap Distance 1mm
Radius of the Dipole 1mm Return loss for different Arm Lengths can be seen in Fig. 3a
which is depicting that the operating frequency of the designed
antenna is decreasing as the arm length of antenna is increased.
The Return loss behaviour of Half Wave Dipole Antenna

(a) Return Loss of Antenna with Four Different Arm Lengths

Fig. 1: Dimensions of Half Wave Dipole Antenna

III. S IMULATION R ESULTS AND D ESIGN V ERIFICATION

The software used to model and simulate the half-wave
dipole antenna is Ansys HFSS. It analyzes 3D and multilayer
structures of general shapes. It has been widely used in the
design of different type of antennas. It can be used to calculate
and plot the Return Loss, VSWR as well as the radiation
patterns.

A. Return Loss
Fig. 2 shows the return loss for the half wave dipole antenna.
S11 graphs is depicting that the deigned dipole antenna has the
maximum efficiency at 0.972GHz and has higher return loss (b) Return Loss of Antenna With Five Different Dipole Radius
(more power into the antenna) of -16.72dB.The frequency at Fig. 3: Return Loss of Designed Half Wave Dipole Antenna
which higher return loss is observed is also called the resonant
frequency of an Antenna. From the S parameter Fig. 2, it can for different Dipole Radius has also been analyzed and it
can be found out from the Fig. 3b that by increasing the
radius of dipole, there is a very slight decrease in Operating
frequency and return loss. However, Bandwidth of the Antenna
is increasing with the increase in dipole radius.
B. Radiation Pattern of Half Wave Dipole Antenna
3D radiation pattern of the designed half wave dipole
antenna can be analyzed from the Fig. 4a which is indicating
that the radiated power is less at the extreme ends of antenna
and this radiated power is increased by moving towards the
center and is maximum at the center of antenna. Sane can be
viewed by analyzing the 2D radiation pattern of aformentioned
antenna as shown in Fig. 4b.
(a) 3D Radiation Pattern of Half Wave Dipole Antenna
(b) 2D Radiation Pattern of Half Wave Dipole Antenna
Fig. 4: Radiation Pattern of Half Wave Dipole Antenna
C ONCLUSION
A half-wave dipole antenna has been designed and simu-
lated using Ansys HFSS software which ease the simulation.
Half-wave dipole antenna was selected to obtained target
frequency of 1GHz. Return loss obtained as -16.72 dB which
shows the characteristic of reflection coefficient. 3D radiation
patter was also analyzed. The bandwidth for the designed
half wave dipole antenna is found to be between 0.88GHz to
0.97GHz. The behavior of half wave dipole antenna was also
analyzed by changing the arm lengths and radius of the dipole
and observing the change the respective changes in operating
frequency, bandwidth and resturn loss.
R EFERENCES
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[3] Dr. Sumit Kumar Gupta, Harish Kumar Jangam Nipun Sharma, “Theory
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[5] Aditya Ashok Bhosale, Divya Gawande and Xiaoliang Zhang, “A
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