DESIGN OF YAGI-UDA ANTENNA WITH MULTIPLE DRIVEN ELEMENTS

In this paper, we present a novel design for an end-fire antenna, which generalizes the concept of conventional Yagi-Uda antenna by introducing multiple driven elements. Through using the method of maximum power transmission efficiency, the optimal distribution of excitations for the multiple driven elements can be obtained, and the end-fire gain of the array can be significantly improved in comparison with the conventional Yagi-Uda antenna with a single driven element. In order to demonstrate the new idea, two different types of antenna arrays are designed and fabricated. The first design uses a split-ring resonator (SRR) as radiating element. Compared to similar planar Yagi-Uda SRR antenna arrays previously reported, the number of antenna elements can be reduced from fifteen to eight, and the longitudinal dimension is significantly reduced by 46% while the same performances are maintained with the gain reaching 11.7 dBi at 5.5 GHz. In the second design, printed half-wavelength dipoles are used as the antenna elements. It is shown that an eight-element dipole array with four driven elements has a peak gain of 13.4 dBi at 2.45 GHz, which is 1.8 dB higher than the conventional printed Yagi-Uda dipole antenna array with the same number of elements.