Hal Schrank

14414 Cuba Road

Hunt Volley, MD 21030
(410) 584-2822

Directivity of Omnidirectional Antennas

This issue begins the eleventh year of the Antenna Deisgner‘s
Notebook column, which, according to a recent survey, continues
to be one of the favorite columns of our Mugazitie readers. To
those who may have forgotten, the main purpose of this column generally gives reasonable results for pencil-beam or fan-beam
is to present practical design information to our readers in useful, antennas, but often gives poor results for the directivity of omnidi-
succinct form, and to thereby help antenna design engineers become rectional antennas. This design note presents a graph, giving the
ore productive in their work. A secondary purpose is to provide directivity of an omnidirectional antenna versus the half-power ele-
some balance to the preponderance of theoretical material published vation-plane beamwidth This data has been calculated assuming a
by our Society, particularly in the Trumactiorn. It is unfortunate sin” 8 elevation-plane pattern. A closed-form curve-fitted approxi-
but true that many antenna engineers either discontinue their mem- mation for this relationship is also presented
bership in the IEEE, or never join in the first place, because of this
preponderance, which is (and I’m afraid will always be) due to the
fact that academic and research engineers are more highly moti- 2. Derivation
vated to publish their work than are the “average” engineers. If only
these design engineers could be encouraged to write more articles
If we assume that the elevation-plane power pattern of the
and papers, we would have a better balance between theoretical and omnidirectional antenna can be approximated as
application material. Let’s all do whatever we can to improve this
balance.
F ( 8)= sin ‘I e, (2)
Credit for the success of this column belongs to the many
contributors who have sent me their ideas and articles for publica- then it is a straightforward problem to find 71 for a specified
tion. A complete IO-year Table of Contents was published in the half-power beamwidth, and the directivity can be found by numeri-
previous (August, 1993) issue of the Muguzitie. Note that there cal integration. The result is plotted in Figure 1.
were only two issues without the ADN column. My sincere thanks
go to the contributors and faithful readers, as well as to Dan I I Directivity of Oninidirectional AnteMaS
_._...
L __..
A ....-
Schaubert, who invited me to begin this column back in 1983, 18 1
I I assuming sin”8 elevation pattern
, I
when he was Editor of the AP Newletter Many thanks also to p....’
I
r - - - - 7.- ---1
8

Ross Stone for his encouragement and fine editorial assistance.

This month’s column is submitted by Dave Pozar, who

authored and co-authored two previous columns (December, 1987,
and October, 1990). Dave is with the ECE Department at the Uni-
versity of Massachusetts at Amherst, Amherst, MA, 01003
Thanks, Dave, for your continued interest and for your many fine,
useful publications and papers over the years

1. Introduction 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180

lthough it is a very basic result, none of the usual antenna
A handbooks or textbooks give a simple relation between the
half-power beamwidth and the directivity of an omnidirectional-
antenna pattern. Such results exist for aperture antennas. For
example, the often-used approximation, that [ I ]
Elevation Plane HPBW
Figure 1. Directivity versus elevation-plane half-power beam-
width, for a n omnidirectional antenna. T h e open circles a r e
d a t a computed from t h e approximate curve-fit equation, given
in Equation (3).

50 1045-9243193/$03.0001993IEEE IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine, Vol. 35, No. 5, October 1993

..... .
 For example, a half-wave dipole has a HPBW of 7 8 O , and a
directivity of 2 2 dB The pattern function of Equation (2) has no
sidelobes, but this causes little error for practical line sources, hav-
ing typical sidelobe levels As an example, a 51, uniform line source
has a beamwidth of lo", and a 13 dB sidelobe level The integrated
pattern of this source has a directivity of I O 1 dB, which is in good
agreement with Figure 1

Note that if Equation ( I ) is used, with 8,= 180°, the correct

result for directivity is only obtained for a HPBW near 180°, and
the error becomes substantial for smaller beamwidths. For example,
for a HPBW of 30°, Equation ( I ) gives a directivity of 7.8 dB,
while the correct result is 5.6 dB.

3. Curve-fit equation

An approximate curve-fit equation to the curve in Figure 1 is

given by
Low Cost Antenna
D = 1010g[1910~0818 + 1 / HPBW - 172.41 dB, (3)
Measurement and
where HPBW is the elevation-plane half-power beamwidth, in
degrees. Data from this formula are plotted as open circles in Fig- Analysis System
ure 1. Agreement with the numerically computed curve is good, for
beamwidths up to about 140"

4. Reference
Our antenna engineers have been
using this program for three years.
1. C. A. Balanis, Antenna Theory: Analysis and Design, New
York, Wiley, 1982. They thought we should share it
with you.

Ideas for Antenna Designer' Notebook Provides computed gain, beamwidth,

Ideas are needed for future issues of the Magazine. Please
send your suggestions to Hal Schrank and they will be beam squint, sidelobe and other analysis
considered for publication as quickly as possible. Topics can
include antenna design tips, equations, nomographs, or functions Graphical comparison of data
shortcuts as well as ideas to improve or facilitate
measurements. Propagation topics are also welcome, in fact I 8 pattern cuts Multiple rectilinear and
we strongly urge our propagation members to help us balance
the coverage in this column. polar plot windows Easy data interface
Special Offer to Contributors
How would you like a complete set of the Antenna Designer's with Lotus@ 1-2-3s Windows 3.x
Notebook articles published since this column began in the
August 1983 issue? Send and idea for a future issue of our required
Notebook to Hal Schrank and he will be happy to reward you
with a folder containing copies of all items, including yours,
when it is published. This column is a great opportunity for
many of our AP-S members who are too busy to publish a
lengthy paper but who would like to share some practical
Demonstration disk available
information that can help to increase the productivity of the
antenna and propagation engineers.
Updated Table of Contents
An updated Table of Contents for the Antenna Designer's For more information, call
Notebook is now available. Those who would like a copy
should send and empty, self-addressed, stamped, 9.5" x 12"
envelope with their request to Hal Schrank.
1-800-245-1 455
1-408-496-5355
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DESKIN RESEARCH GROUP, INC.

The Antenna Specialists

IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine, Vol. 35, No. 5, October 1993 51