Applications to Short Antenna

• The short dipole antenna is the simplest of all

antennas. It is simply an open-circuited wire,
fed at its center as shown in Figure .

• The words "short" or "small" in antenna

engineering always imply "relative to a
wavelength". So the absolute size of the above
dipole antenna does not matter, only the size of
the wire relative to the wavelength of the
frequency of operation. Typically, a dipole is
short if its length is less than a tenth of a
wavelength:
• If the short dipole antenna is oriented along
the z-axis with the center of the dipole at z=0,
then the current distribution on a thin, short
dipole is given by:

• The current distribution is plotted in Figure .

Note that this is the amplitude of the current
distribution; it is oscillating in time
sinusoidally at frequency f.
• The fields radiated from the short dipole
antenna in the far field are given by:

• The radiation resistance can be calculated to

be:
• For short dipole antennas that are smaller
fractions of a wavelength.
• the radiation resistance becomes smaller than
the loss resistance, and consequently this
antenna can be very inefficient.
• The bandwidth for short dipoles is difficult to
define.
• The input impedance varies wildly with frequency
because of the reactance component of the input
impedance.
• Hence, these antennas are typically used in
narrowband applications.