Simulation Comparisons of Three Different Meander Line Dipoles

: This report presents simulation comparisons between an antipodal planar dipole (resonant at 450 MHz) and 3 different meander structures: square, sinusoidal, and triangular. The 3 different structures demonstrate the effect that different meander trace structures can have on size reduction, gain, reflection coefficient, and bandwidth. The meanders were designed first with a circuit equivalent. The results between the 3 structures show that for size reduction the square meander is the preferred method at 27.5% but it reduces the bandwidth by 22.37% with a loss in matching of 4.36 dB and gain loss of 0.26 dBi. The sinusoidal meander shows a size reduction of 23.04% and a bandwidth reduction of 12.9% with a loss in reflection coefficient by 0.48 dB and a loss in gain by about 0.14 dBi. The triangular meander shows the best results for the gain and reflection coefficient, while only having a size reduction of 19.82%. The triangular meander reduces the bandwidth by 16.0% with an improvement in matching by 0.69 dB and a loss of gain by 0.09 dBi. Ultimately, the preferred meander structure depends upon the application.