Effective Aperture

What is it?

• It is the ability of an antenna to collect energy from an incoming or incident

electromagnetic wave in a certain region close to the antenna.
• It depends on the power density of the incoming wave as well as the effective
area of antenna i.e the area from which the antenna can absorb energy from
the wave.
 Other Definitions

1. The effective antenna aperture is the ratio of the available power at the
terminals of the antenna to the power flux density of a plane wave incident
upon the antenna, which is matched to the antenna in terms of polarization.
If no direction is specified, the direction of maximum radiation is implied
2. Effective Aperture (Ae) describes the effectiveness of an Antenna in receiving
mode; It is the ratio of power delivered to receiver to incident power density.
3. It is the area that captures energy from a passing EM wave
In receiving mode as shown in the picture, some of the incident wave is not going to be
captured by the antenna if the effective aperture is small.
 Power absorbed by antenna and efficiency.
• Concept of Apertures is most simply introduced by considering a
Receiving Antenna.
• Let receiving antenna be a rectangular Horn immersed in the field of
uniform plane wave as shown
• Let the poynting vector or power density of the plane wave be S
watts/sq –m and let the area or physical aperture be Ap sq-m.
• If the Horn extracts all the power from the Wave over its entire
physical Aperture/area Ap, Power absorbed is given by
P = SAP = (E2/Z) AP where S is poynting vector/power density ,
Z is intrinsic impedance of medium,
E is rms value of electric field
• But the Field response of Horn is not uniform across A p because E at
sidewalls must equal zero. Thus effective Aperture A e of the Horn is
less than Ap
• Aperture efficiency is defined as
ϵAP = Ae /Ap
• Consider an Antenna with an effective Aperture Ae
which radiates all of its power in a conical pattern of
beam area A, assuming uniform field Ea over the
aperture, power radiated is

  P=
• Assuming a uniform field Er in far field at a distance
r, Power Radiated is also given by
P=
• Equating the two and noting that Er = we get Aperture –Beam area relation

• At a given wavelength if Effective Aperture is known, Beam area can be determined or vice-
versa
• Directivity in terms of beam area is given by
• 

• Directivity can be written as

Questions
 Any observations from the example?

• Please check the example and look at what happens when the frequency
doubles.
 The End

• For more infor please watch video on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QocHIAeo8sk