A Yagi-Uda Antenna, commonly known simply as a Yagi antenna or Yagi, is an antenna consisting of an array of a dipole and additional parasitic elements. The dipole in the array is driven, and another element, slightly longer, operates as a reflector. Other shorter parasitic elements can be added in front of the dipole as directors. This arrangement gives the antenna directionality that a single dipole lacks. Yagis are directional along the axis perpendicular to the dipole in the plane of the elements, from the reflector through the driven element and out the director(s); if one holds out one's arms to form a dipole and has the reflector behind oneself, one would receive signals with maximum gain from in front of oneself.

Description

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Yagi-Uda antennas include one or more director elements, which, by virtue of their being arranged at approximately a quarter-wavelength mutual spacing and being progressively slightly shorter than a half wavelength, direct signals of increasingly higher frequencies onto the active dipole. (See also log-periodic antenna.) Thus, the complete antenna achieves a distinct response bandwidth determined by the length, diameter, and spacing of all the individual elements; but its overall gain is proportional to its length, rather than simply the number of elements.

All the elements usually lie in the same plane, typically supported on a single boom or crossbar. The parasitic elements do not need to be coplanar, but can be distributed on both sides of the plane of symmetry. Many Yagi-Uda antennas (including the one pictured) are designed to operate on multiple bands; the resulting design is made more complicated by the presence of a resonant parallel coil and capacitor combination (called a "trap") in the elements. Traps are used in pairs on a multiband antenna. The trap serves to isolate the outer portion of the element from the inner portion for the trap design frequency. In practice, the higher frequency traps are located closest to the boom of the antenna. Typically, a triband beam will have 2 pairs of traps per element. For example, a typical triband Yagi-Uda beam covering the 10, 15 and 20 meter bands would have traps for the 10 and 15 meter bands. The introduction of traps is not without cost—due to their nature, they reduce the overall bandwidth of the antenna and overall efficiency of the array on any given frequency, and radically affects its response in the desired direction.

The Yagi-Uda antenna was invented in 1926 by Shintaro Uda of Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, with the collaboration of Hidetsugu Yagi, also of Tohoku University. Yagi published the first English-language article on the antenna in 1928 and it came to be associated with his name. However, Yagi always acknowledged Uda's principal contribution to the design, and the proper name for the antenna is, as above, the Yagi-Uda antenna (or array).

The Yagi was first widely used during World War II for airborne radar sets, because of its simplicity and directionality. Ironically, many Japanese radar engineers were unaware of the design until very late in the war, due to inter-branch fighting between the Army and Navy. Arrays can be seen on the nose cones of many WWII aircraft, notably some versions of the German Junkers Ju 88 fighter-bomber and the British Bristol Beaufighter night-fighter and Short Sunderland flying-boat. Indeed, the latter had so many antennae elements arranged on its back it was nicknamed the "Flying Porcupine" by German airmen.

Wireless energy transfer

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Hidetsugu Yagi attempted wireless energy transfer in February of 1926 with this antenna. Yagi and Uda published their first report on the wave projector directional antenna. Yagi managed to demonstrate a proof of concept, but the engineering problems proved to be more onerous than conventional systems.

See also

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• Antenna (radio)

External articles and further reading

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Journals

• S. Uda, "High angle radiation of short electric waves". Proceedings of the IRE, vol. 15, pp. 377-385, May 1927.
• S. Uda, "Radiotelegraphy and radiotelephony on half-meter waves". Proceedings of the IRE, vol. 18, pp. 1047-1063, June 1930.
• H .Yagi, "Beam transmission of ultra-shortwaves". Proceedings of the IRE, vol. 16, pp. 715-740, June 1928.
• "Scanning the Past: A History of Electrical Engineering from the Past". Proceedings of the IEEE Vol. 81, No. 6, 1993.
• Shozo Usami and Gentei Sato, "The Authenticity of the Newman Notebook and Its Reference to the Yagi antenna".0-7803-7070-8/01/$10.00200 01 IEEE.

Patents

Japanese

• JP69115

American

Websites

• "Directive Short Wave Antenna, 1924". IEEE Milestones, IEEE History Center, IEEE, 2005.
• D. Jefferies, "Yagi-Uda antennas". 2004.
• James E. Brittain. "Hidetsugu Yagi Yagi Antenna". School of History, Technology, and Society.

Radio frequency antenna types | Wireless_communications

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