IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 55, NO.

12, DECEMBER 2007 3713

A Two-Element L-Band Quasi-Yagi Antenna Array With

Omnidirectional Coverage
Grant S. Shiroma and Wayne A. Shiroma

Abstract—The design of a two-element quasi-Yagi antenna array with

omnidirectional coverage is presented. The prototype array has a 50%
bandwidth ( S11 10 dB) of 1.2–2.0 GHz. E-plane and H-plane
radiation patterns of the single antenna element are shown at 1.3 and
1.7 GHz. The prototype two-element array exhibits an omnidirectional
radiation pattern in the H-plane, with a maximum gain of 4.5 dBi at
1.3 GHz with ripples of less than 2.6 dB and 2.6 dBi at 1.7 GHz with
ripples of less than 1.5 dB. The antenna has potential use in broadband
mobile applications.
Index Terms—L-band antenna, microstrip antenna, omnidirectional
antenna, quasi-Yagi.

I. INTRODUCTION
The quasi-Yagi antenna is a popular choice because of its wide band-
width and low-profile microstrip implementation [1]–[3]. First pro-
posed for use at X-band, the original prototype exhibited a bandwidth
of 17% [4]. The design was further optimized to produce a bandwidth
of 48% [5], [6]. Since then, there have been several scaled versions of Fig. 1. Dimensions of the L-band quasi-Yagi prototype with the 90 miter
the original X-band design to operate at different frequencies [7]–[9]. shown in detail. The quasi-Yagi’s E-field is aligned with the -plane and the
While there have been several demonstrations of arrays of quasi-Yagi H-field with the  -plane.
antennas to increase directivity [10], [11], the broad radiation charac-
teristic of the quasi-Yagi also makes it suitable in a two-element con-
figuration to provide omnidirectional coverage. The design would be
useful for broadband mobile applications.
This paper presents the design of the first quasi-Yagi array specif-
ically designed for omnidirectional coverage. Section II describes the
process of scaling a C-band quasi-Yagi to the L-band. Section III de-
scribes the two-element quasi-Yagi array designed to achieve omni-
directional coverage.

II. L-BAND DESIGN

The quasi-Yagi design is directly scalable from one band to another.
The design of the L-band prototype is based on the C-band prototype
described in [7], which has a center frequency of 5.0 GHz. The C-band
prototype was fabricated on Rogers RT/duroid 6010.2LM (r = 10:2,
t = 1:27 mm). The frequency range of the L-band prototype was
chosen to be 1.2–2.0 GHz in accordance with the requirements of
the L-band mobile communications system of the Military Mobile
Command Center (M2C2) project [12]. To obtain a center frequency Fig. 2. Simulated and measured jS 11j of the L-band quasi-Yagi prototype. The
of 1.6 GHz, the C-band design must be scaled by a factor of 3.125. measured bandwidth is 1.2–2.0 GHz (50%).
This scaling factor would require a RT/duroid 6010.2LM substrate
with thickness of 3.97 mm. Since this is not one of the standard
thicknesses offered by the substrate manufacturer, the L-band design varying the parameters as described in [13], where the parameters
is first scaled by a factor of 3.00 and then tuned to achieve the desired L1 ; L2 ; L4 ; L5 ; L6 ; L7 ; L8 ; S1 ; S2 ; S3 ; S4 are scaled by a factor
center frequency of 1.6 GHz. This allows for the use of Rogers TMM of 1.044. The design is simulated using Ansoft High Frequency
10i (r = 9:8, t = 3:81 mm), which has similar electrical properties Structure Simulator (HFSS). The dimensions of the optimized L-band
to RT/duroid 6010.2LM and was chosen for fabrication reasons. design, shown in Fig. 1, are W1 = 3:61, W2 = 2:03, W3 = 7:44,
The first scaling results in a design with a simulated center fre- L1 = 25:53, L2 = 27:28, L3 = 12:70, L4 = 17:78, L5 = 6:05,
quency of 1.67 GHz. Tuning the design to 1.60 GHz is achieved by L6 = 25:02, L7 = 22:07, L8 = 0:08, L9 = 5:46, L10 = 114:00,
L11 = 111:00, S1 = 1:56, S2 = 3:32, S3 = 13:60, S4 = 7:49 (units
in mm). The L-band prototype is fed through a via in the ground plane
Manuscript received March 18, 2007; revised August 1, 2007. This work was using an SMA connector.
Fig. 2 shows the simulated and measured jS11j of the prototype de-
supported in part by Oceanit, Honolulu, HI.

sign. The measured bandwidth (jS11j  010 dB) is 1.2–2.0 GHz

The authors are with the University of Hawaii, Department of Electrical En-
gineering, Honolulu, HI 96822 USA (e-mail: grant.shiroma@hawaii.edu).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2007.910516 (50%).

0018-926X/$25.00 © 2007 IEEE

3714 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 55, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2007

Fig. 3. Measured E-plane (-plane,  = 90 ) radiation patterns of the L-band

quasi-Yagi antenna element at: (a) 1.3 GHz and (b) 1.7 GHz. Fig. 4. Measured H-plane ( -plane,  = 90 ) radiation patterns of the L-band
quasi-Yagi antenna element at: (a) 1.3 GHz and (b) 1.7 GHz.

Fig. 3 shows the measured co-polarization and cross-polarization

radiation patterns of the L-band quasi-Yagi in the E-plane (-plane,
 = 90 ) at 1.3 GHz and 1.7 GHz. The measured 3-dB beamwidth
is 97 and 80 , respectively. The H-plane ( -plane,  = 90 ) radia-
tion patterns are shown in Fig. 4. The measured 3-dB beamwidth in the
H-plane is 178 and 167 , respectively.

III. TWO-ELEMENT ARRAY WITH OMNIDIRECTIONAL COVERAGE

Two quasi-Yagi antenna elements are combined to form a two-el-
ement array with omnidirectional coverage in the H-plane. To avoid
nulls caused by a large element spacing, the quasi-Yagi elements are
arranged as shown in Fig. 5, so that the element spacing is zero in the
H-plane. It was first assumed that the phase center of each element is
at the front edge of the substrate so that aligning the front edge of each
element would result in an array spacing of zero. It was found experi-
mentally that the phase center of the antenna element is actually located
2.5 cm from the front edge of the substrate. A zero-element spacing in
the H-plane is obtained by overlapping the front edge of each element
by 2.5 cm. The element spacing in the E-plane is 15.1 cm (0:81 at
1.6 GHz).
The two elements are fed in-phase through a Miteq PD2-1000/
2000-200S two-way power divider. The bottom element is designed
according to the specifications in Fig. 1. In order for the elements to
radiate in-phase, the top element is designed to be a mirror image
(along the y-axis) of the bottom element. An acrylic glass fixture
provides a support for the antenna elements and power divider. The Fig. 5. Two-element L-band quasi-Yagi array with omnidirectional coverage
overall dimensions of the array is 17.2 cm by 26.5 cm (0:92 by 1:41 in the H-plane (units in cm). Wavelength is calculated at the center frequency
at 1.6 GHz). of 1.6 GHz.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 55, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2007 3715

Fig. 6. Measured jS 11j of the two-element array. The measured bandwidth is

1.2–2.0 GHz (50%).

Fig. 8. Measured H-plane ( -plane,  = 90 ) radiation patterns of the two-

element array at: (a) 1.3 GHz and (b) 1.7 GHz.

bandwidth of 1.2–2.0 GHz and exhibits an omnidirectional radiation

pattern in the H-plane, with a maximum gain of 4.5 dBi at 1.3 GHz
and with ripples of less than 62.6 dB and 2.6 dBi at 1.7 GHz with
ripples of 61.5 dB. The antenna has potential use in broadband mobile
applications.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to acknowledge Dr. R. Miyamoto and
D. Ah Yo of Oceanit, Honolulu, HI, for the valuable discussions and
for providing the measurement data for Figs. 7 and 8.

Fig. 7. Measured E-plane (-plane,  = 90 ) radiation patterns of the two-
element array at: (a) 1.3 GHz and (b) 1.7 GHz.
The measured jS 11j of the prototype array is shown in Fig. 6. The
prototype array has a bandwidth of 1.1–2.0 GHz (56%). The measured
E-plane and H-plane radiation patterns of the array at 1.3 GHz and
1.7 GHz are shown in Figs. 7 and 8, respectively. The prototype array
exhibits an omnidirectional pattern in the H-plane with ripples of less
than 62.6 dB and 61.5 dB, respectively. The maximum gain of the
array is 4.5 dBi at 1.3 GHz and 2.6 dBi at 1.7 GHz.
IV. CONCLUSION
Two quasi-Yagi antenna elements are combined to form an array
with omnidirectional coverage in the H-plane. The prototype has a 50%
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DOA Estimation by Exploiting the Symmetric
Configuration of Uniform Linear Array
Zhongfu Ye and Xu Xu
Abstract—A new direction of arrival (DOA) estimation method is pro-
posed for uniform linear array in this paper when both uncorrelated and
coherent sources are present. The uncorrelated and coherent sources are es-
timated at two different stages. The uncorrelated sources are first estimated
using conventional subspace methods, and then they are eliminated by ex-
ploiting the symmetric configuration of the array. Finally the remaining
coherent sources are estimated by reconstructing a non-Toeplitz matrix.
The number of sources resolved by our method can exceed the number of
array elements. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and effi-
ciency of our proposed method.
Index Terms—Coherent sources, direction of arrival (DOA), forward/
backward spatial smoothing (FBSS), uniform linear array.
I. INTRODUCTION
Direction of arrival (DOA) estimation of multiple narrowband
sources is a major research issue in array signal processing. Many
high-resolution DOA estimation methods [1], such as the famous
MUSIC [2] and ESPRIT [3], have been developed over the years.
However, there are often highly correlated or coherent sources in
multipath propagation environments caused by various reflective
surfaces (e.g., sea, buildings, hills, etc.) or in military scenarios when
smart jammers are present. Those high-resolution methods will fail
in such environments since they inherently require the sources to be
uncorrelated or lowly correlated. The decorrelating method, which is
relatively more effective by now, is the technique of spatial smoothing.
This technique and its improved methods [4], [5] not only have small
computation but also high performance as long as SNR is not low. In
[6], a Toeplitz matrix is reconstructed from the covariance matrix to
decorrelate the coherent sources and also obtain good performance.
Manuscript received July 31, 2006; revised February 26, 2007.
The authors are with the Department of Electronic Engineering and Informa-
tion Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230027,
China (e-mail: yezf@ustc.edu.cn; xxu@ustc.edu.cn).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2007.910493
0018-926X/$25.00 © 2007 IEEE
But these methods are all at the cost of a reduction in array aperture
and the number of resolved sources is restricted within the number of
reduced array no matter whether the sources are coherent or not. Some
subspace methods [7], [8], which are computationally efficient but
offer similar performance to the Maximum likelihood (ML) methods,
can resolve the coherent sources without reducing the array aperture.
But the maximal number of resolved sources also does not exceed
the number of array elements. Although some higher order cumulants
based methods [9], [10] can resolve more sources, but the required
number of snapshots is too large and the complexity is relatively
higher.
A kind of differencing method is introduced in [11]–[14]. The DOAs
of uncorrelated and coherent sources are estimated separately. [11]
and [12] utilize the property that the covariance matrix of uncorrelated
sources is a Toeplitz matrix for a uniform linear array. But they resolve
only two coherent sources in each group. [13] can resolve more sources.
It utilizes the forward smoothing matrix and the backward one to elim-
inate the contribution of uncorrelated sources. But it has the problem
that the differencing matrix will be rank deficient one for odd number
of coherent sources after the covariance matrix of uncorrelated sources
is subtracted. It needs extra processing to recover the rank, which is
justified only by simulation and lacks theoretical proof. In [14], the co-
variance matrix of uncorrelated sources needs to be constructed, which
may be difficult in realization.
In this paper, a new method is proposed for DOA estimation to re-
solve more sources than the array elements when the uncorrelated and
coherent sources coexist. The uncorrelated sources are estimated first.
By exploiting the symmetric property of array elements, their contri-
bution is eliminated after subtracting between the entries of covari-
ance matrix. The subtracted entries are then used to reconstruct a new
non-Toeplitz matrix to estimate the coherent sources, whose rank is
equal to the number of coherent sources.
This paper is organized as follows: The narrowband signal model is
introduced in Section II. The method of DOA estimation is discussed
in detail in Section III. The simulation results are shown and analyzed
in Section IV. The conclusion is made in Section V.
II. FORMULATION OF THE PROBLEM
Consider a number of K narrowband far-field sources impinging on
a uniform linear array with M array elements, where the distance be-
tween adjacent elements is equal to half of the wavelength. Assume
that there are L groups of coherent sources due to multipath propa-
gation and the coherent source coming from the direction il is cor-
responding to the lth multipath propagation of the source si (t) with
power i2 ; i = 1; . . . ; L, and l = 1; . . . ; Pi . Assume the remaining
D=K0 L i=1 Pi = K 0 P sources si (t) are coming from direc-
tion i with power i2 for i = P + 1; . . . ; K and all sources si (t) for
i = 1; . . . ; L; P + 1; . . . ; K are uncorrelated to each other. Select the
index of the central element of the array to be 0 when M = 2N + 1.
(For the case when M is even, we can assume there exists a virtual el-
ement 0 at the center of the array.) The M 2 1 array output vector x(t)
is then given by
x(t) = [x0N (t); . . . ; x0 (t); . . . ; xN (t)]T
L P K
= a(il )il si (t) + a(i)si(t) + n(t)
i=1 l=1 i=P +1
= Ac sc (t) + Au su (t) + n(t)
= As(t) + n(t)
(1)
a
where () = [ejN sin  ; . . . ; 1; . . . ; e0jN sin  ]T is the steering
vector, il is the complex fading coefficient of the lth multipath prop-