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YAGI Antenna Design

Article · January 2017

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 YAGI Antenna Design
Mustafa A Kabel
Technical University of Denmark (DTU)
DTU Electrical Engineering
31412 Antenna and Microwave Technology for Wireless Communications Engineering

1. Introduction
The Yagi antenna's overall basic design consists of a "resonant" fed dipole (the fed dipole is the
driven element and in the picture above and the second from the left side ), with one or more
parasitic elements. These parasitic elements are called the "reflector"and the "directors."The
reflector is on the far left in the picture above and the directors are all of the elements starting
from the third element from the left and continuing to the right side of the picture. The
horizontal section between all of the elements in the Yagi is called the boom.

2. A YAGI ANTENNA PATTERNS

The directional gain, front-to-back ratio, beam width, and unwanted (or wanted) side lobes
combine to form the overall radiation pattern. The antenna's radiation pattern bandwidth is the
range of frequencies above and below the design frequency in which the pattern remains
consistent.
The amount of variation from the antenna's design specification goals that can be tolerated is
subjective, and limits put into the design are mainly a matter of choice of the designer.

Equal spaced, equal length directors may give higher gain at a particular frequency, but the
bandwidth is more narrow and larger side lobe levels are created.
Wide spacing will increase the bandwidth, but the side lobes become large.

By adjusting both the spacing and director lengths the pattern and the pattern bandwidth may
be more controlled. If you reduce the length of each succeeding director by a set factor (%), AND
increase the spacing of each succeeding director by another factor, a very clean pattern with
good pattern bandwidth can be obtained.

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3. Design Process
There are three types of elements in the Yagi antenna:

the Reflector (REFL)

the Driven Element (DE)
the Directors (DIR)

There are formulas that you can use to decide both the length of the pieces and the spacing
between them. The dimensions of the elements are frequency-dependent. Here are the general
rules for length:

Reflector length (REFL) = 0.495 x wavelength

Dipole radiator (DE) = 0.473 x wavelength

Director (DIR) = 0.440 x wavelength

Spacing between elements is the other part:

Reflector-Dipole radiator = 0.125 x wavelength

Dipole radiator - Director = 0.125 x wavelength

4. Design of 3 elements Yagi-Uda Antenna

with wide bandwidth
The design requirements of 3-elements yagi antenna:

Operating freq.: 61-68 MHz

Center freq.: 64.5 MHz

The wavelength is calculated using this formula: Wavelength (in metres) = 300 / frequency
(MHz)

Wavelength (in metres) = 300 / 64.5 (MHz) = 4.6511 meter

Reflector length (REFL) = 0.495 x wavelength = 2.30 meter

Dipole radiator (DE) = 0.473 x wavelength = 2.19 meter

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Director (DIR) = 0.440 x wavelength = 2.04 meter

Spacing between elements is the other part:

Reflector-Dipole radiator = 0.125 x wavelength = 0.581 meter

Dipole radiator - Director = 0.125 x wavelength = 0.581 meter

Radius of elements is 0.005 times Wavelength = 0.0232 meter

Now we use the program YAGI.EXE to test our design by inserting the values of calculations.

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Optimizing of bandwidth by using Quickyagi program

I have test the design of antenna in Quickyagi before Optimizing.

3 dB Bandwidth is 70.5° before optimizing.

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After that we made optimizing of antenna by using optimizing function in Quickyagi program.
Then I got the following results.

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3 dB Bandwidth is better and it is 73.1°.

So from the results, we have find out that if we reduce the length of each succeeding director by
a set factor (%), AND increase the spacing of each succeeding director by another factor, a very
clean pattern with good pattern bandwidth can be obtained.

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5. Design of 7 elements Yagi-Uda Antenna
with high gain

The design requirements of yagi-uda antenna:

Operating freq. 880-960 MHz.

So center freq. is: 920 MHz

Wavelength (in meters) = 300 / 920 (MHz) = 0.326 meter

Reflector length (REFL) = 0.495 x wavelength = 0.161 meter

Dipole radiator (DE) = 0.473 x wavelength = 0.154 meter

Director (DIR)=D1=D2=D3=D4=D5 = 0.440 x wavelength = 0.143 meter

Spacing between elements is the other part:

Reflector-Dipole radiator = 0.125 x wavelength = 0.040 meter

Dipole radiator - Director = 0.125 x wavelength = 0.040 meter

Diameter of elements is: 10 mm

By inserting the values of antenna parameters in Quickyagi program, I got optimizing of

Yagi-Uda antenna and I got gain= 10.31 dBi and Front to Back radio = 30.71 dB.

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Reference impedance = 50 ohm

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 Input impedance to our Yagi antenna is 25.7 ohm.

Reflection Coefficient = (25.7-50)/(25.7+50)= -0.321

The voltage standing wave ratio is then equal to:

SWR= (1+0.321) / (1-0.321) = 1.9

SWR is big according to our designs requirement which is SWR should be less than 1.5. Therefore
I use gamma match Yagi antenna as shown in the figure below to increase the input
impedance 25.7 ohm of our antenna to be near the reference impedance 50 ohm. And then we
get SWR<1.5

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