Antenna Manufacturing

From a construction point of view, antennas (such as dipoles, loops and

horns) are normally manufactured using conducting materials, low-loss
dielectric materials (e.g. dielectric resonant antennas) or a combination of
both (e.g. patch antennas). The selection of the right material and a robust
construction are important elements in making a successful antenna.
7.1.1 Conducting Materials
Conducting materials are the most widely used to build antennas. In
principle, all conductive materials can be employed, but the antenna
efficiency is closely linked to the conductivity of the material: the higher the
conductivity, the higher the efficiency. Thus, in practice, we only choose
materials with very good conductivity.
In addition to the conductivity, we have to take other things into account,
which include the following aspects:
_ Mechanical considerations: the material should be strong enough to
keep its desired shape under normal working conditions.
_ Environmental considerations: the material should be resilient to
environmental changes for example, it should not oxidize or erode in order
to maintain its good conductivity.
Sometimes, a layer of paint is applied to meet this requirement. The paint
may affect the antenna performance, so a trade-off is necessary.

Antenna Measurement Basics

Once an antenna is designed and constructed, it is essential to validate the

design with proper measurements, a crucial element of the development
process. The most important measurements are the impedance and
radiation pattern measurements, since they are the most important
characteristics of an antenna. The input impedance may be specified as a
value at a particular frequency and/or as a maximum VSWR or return loss
over a range of frequencies
(often referred to 50 ohms). The measurement is relatively straightforward.
However, the radiation measurement is much more complicated and timeconsuming. Typical measurements are the radiation pattern and gain
measurements, which should be performed in an antenna test range. The
radiation patterns of some antennas (such as those for radar, microwave
links, some cellular base stations and satellites) are highly directional and
often have tightly specified envelopes. Not only will the peak gain be
specified, but challenging requirements might also
be placed on parameters such as polarization purity (axial ratio), side lobe
levels and efficiency.
The testing and evaluation of some of these parameters may be difficult.
Details of impedance measurements are given in Section 7.3. Details of
radiation measurements are given in Section
7.2.1 Scattering Parameters
In previous chapters we defined and used the reflection and transmission
coefficients for both
the circuit and field problem analyses. These concepts can be generalized for
network analysis.
A two-port network problem can be illustrated by Figure 7.1, where a1 and
a2 are the input
whilst b1 and b2 are the output at Port 1 and Port 2, respectively. This
network is characterized
by scattering parameters, or S-parameters:

S-parameters are actually reflection and transmission coefficients for a

network of N ports. In
this case, N = 2. These parameters were originally introduced in optics,
where optical waves
were scattered by objects. The concepts were later extended to radiowaves
and RF engineering,
but the term S-parameters has remained unchanged.
It should be pointed out that if a network is passive and contains only
isotropic and loss-free
materials that influence the transmitted signal, the network will obey

The input power is the same as the output power, as expected.

Almost all antennas, attenuators, cables, splitters and combiners are
reciprocal (but maybe
not loss-free) networks. The networks which include anisotropic materials in
the transmission

medium, such as those containing ferrite components, will be nonreciprocal.

Although it
doesnt necessarily contain ferrites, an amplifier is also an example of a
nonreciprocal network.
Now the question is how are S-parameters linked to antennas? From Figure
7.2, we can
clearly see that a transmitting-receiving antenna system in the space can be
considered a 2-port
network. The transmission and reflection can be characterized using Sparameters. S11 and S22
are the reflection coefficients of Antenna 1 and Antenna 2, respectively. They
indicate how well
the antenna feed line is matched with the antenna. S21 and S12 are the
transmission coefficients from one antenna to another. They are determined
by the characteristics of both antennas (such as radiation patterns and
matching) and the separation between them. It should be pointed out
that this equivalent network is not a confined 2-port network but a lossy
open network, since
the power radiated from one antenna is not all received by another antenna,
thus the conditions
in Equations (7.5) and (7.6) do not hold for such an antenna network.
However, the reciprocity
principle can still be applied to this case.

Network Analyzers
For RF/microwave engineering, the oscilloscope is often employed to view
signals in the time
domain while the spectrum analyzer is used to examine signals in the
frequency domain.
For antenna measurements, the most useful and important piece of
equipment is the network
analyzer (NA), which is basically a combination of a transmitter and a
receiver. Normally it has
two ports and the signal can be generated or received from either port. The
main parameters it

measures are the S-parameters, i.e. it measures the reflection and

transmission characteristics
of a network. There are two types of network analyzer:
_ the scalar network analyzer (SNA) measures the amplitude of the
parameters of a network,
such as VSWR, return loss, gain and insertion loss;
_ the vector network analyzer (VNA) measures both the amplitude and phase
of the parameters
of a network.
The VNA is much more powerful than the SNA; in addition to the parameters
which can
be measured by the SNA, it can also measure some very important
parameters such as the
complex impedance, which is essential for antenna measurements. Thus, we
need a VNA not
an SNA for antenna measurements.
What can a VNA measure