A loop antenna is a radio antenna consisting of a loop or coil of wire, tubing, or other electrical conductor, that for transmitting is usually fed by a balanced power source or for receiving feeds a balanced load. Loop antennas can be divided into three categories:
Large loop antennas: Also called self-resonant loop antennas or full-wave loops; they have a perimeter close to one or more whole at the operating frequency, which makes them self-resonant at that frequency. Large loop antennas have a two-lobe dipole like radiation pattern at their first, full-wave resonance, peaking in both directions perpendicular to the plane of the loop.
Halo antennas: Halos are often described as shortened dipole antenna that have been bent into a circular loop, with the ends not quite touching. Some writers prefer to exclude them from loop antennas, since they can be well-understood as dipole antenna, others make halos an intermediate category between large and small loops, or the extreme upper size limit for small transmitting loops: In shape and performance halo antennas are very similar to small loops, only distinguished by being self resonant and having much higher radiation resistance. (See discussion below)
Small loop antennas: Also called magnetic loops or tuned loops; they have a perimeter smaller than half the operating wavelength (typically no more than to wavelength). They are used mainly as receiving antennas because of low efficiency, but are sometimes used for transmission; loops with a circumference smaller than about become so inefficient they are rarely used for transmission. A common example of small loop is the ferrite (loopstick) antenna used in most AM broadcast radios. The radiation pattern of small loop antennas is maximum at directions within the plane of the loop, so perpendicular to the maxima of large loops.
Self-resonant loop antennas for so-called shortwave frequencies are relatively large, with a perimeter just greater than the intended wavelength of operation, hence for circular loops diameters between roughly at the largest, around 1.8 Megahertz. At higher frequencies their sizes become smaller, falling to a diameter of about at 30 MHz.
Large loop antennas can be thought of as whose parallel wires have been split apart and opened out into some oval or shape. The loop's shape can be a circle, triangle, square, rectangle, or in fact any closed polygon, but for resonance, the loop perimeter must be slightly larger than a wavelength.
Unlike a dipole antenna, the polarization of a resonant loop antenna is not obvious from the orientation of the loop itself, but depends on the placement of its feedpoint. If a vertically oriented loop is fed at the bottom, then its radiation will be horizontally polarized; feeding it from the side will make it vertically polarized.
At the lower shortwave frequencies, a full loop is physically quite large, and its only practical installation is "lying flat", with the plane of the loop horizontal to the ground and the antenna wire supported at the same relatively low height by masts along its perimeter.
Above about 10 MHz, the loop is approximately 10 meters in diameter, and it becomes more practical for the loop to be mounted "standing up" – that is, with the plane of the loop vertical – in order to direct its main beam towards the horizon. If the frequency is high enough, then the loop might be small enough to attach to an antenna rotator, in order to rotate that direction as desired. Compared to a dipole or folded dipole, a vertical large loop wastes less power radiating toward the sky or ground, resulting in about 1.5 dB higher Directivity in the two favored horizontal directions.
Additional gain (and a uni-directional radiation pattern) is usually obtained with an array of such elements either as a driven endfire array or in a Yagi antenna configuration – with only one of the loops being driven by the feedline and all the remaining loops being "parasitic" reflectors and directors. The latter is widely used in amateur radio in the "quad" configuration (see photo).
Low-frequency one-wavelength loops "lying down" are sometimes used for local NVIS communication. This is sometimes called a lazy quad. Its radiation pattern consists of a single lobe straight up (radiation toward the ground which is not absorbed is reflected back upward). The radiation pattern and especially the input impedance is affected by its proximity to the ground.
If fed with higher frequencies, then the antenna input impedance will generally include a reactive part and a different resistive component, requiring use of an antenna tuner. As the frequency increases above the first harmonic, the radiation pattern breaks up into multiple lobes which peak at lower angles relative to the horizon, which is an improvement for long-distance communication for frequencies well above the loop's second harmonic.
At wave, the halo antenna is near or on the extreme high limit of the size range for "small" loops, but unlike most oversized small loops, it can be analyzed with simple techniques by treating it as a dipole antenna.
The horizontal radiation pattern of a horizontal halo is nearly omnidirectional – to within 3 dB or less – and that can be evened out by making the loop slightly smaller and adding more capacitance between the element tips. Not only will that even out the gain, it will reduce upward radiation, which for VHF is typically wasted by radiating into space.
Halos pick up less nearby electrical spark interference than monopole antenna and dipole antenna, such as ignition noise from vehicles.
As with all antennas that are physically much smaller than the operating wavelength, small loop antennas have small radiation resistance which is dwarfed by ohmic losses, resulting in a poor antenna efficiency. They are thus mainly used as receiving antennas at lower frequencies (wavelengths of tens to hundreds of meters). Like a short dipole antenna, the radiation resistance is small. The radiation resistance is proportional to the square of the area:
Because of the higher exponent than dipole antenna (loop area squared ≈ perimeter to the 4th power, vs. dipole antenna & monopole antenna length squared = 2nd power), the fall in with reduced size is more extreme.
Small loops have advantages as receiving antennas at frequencies below 10 MHz. Although a small loop's losses can be high, the same loss applies to both the signal and the noise, so the receiving signal-to-noise ratio of a small loop may not suffer at these lower frequencies, where received noise is dominated by Radio noise rather than receiver-internal noise. The ability to more manageably rotate a smaller antenna may help to maximize the signal and reject interference. Several construction techniques are used to ensure that small receiving loops' null directions are "sharp", including adding broken shielding of the loop arms and keeping the perimeter around wavelength (or wave at most). Small transmitting loops' perimeters are instead made as large as feasibly possible, up to wave (or even if possible), in order to make the best of their generally poor efficiency, although doing so sacrifices sharp nulls.
The small loop antenna is also known as a magnetic loop since the response of an electrically small receiving loop is proportional to the rate of change of magnetic flux through the loop. At higher frequencies (or shorter wavelengths), when the antenna is no longer electrically small, the current distribution through the loop may no longer be uniform and the relationship between its response and the incident fields becomes more complicated. In the case of transmission, the fields produced by an electrically small loop are the same as an "infinitesimal magnetic dipole" whose axis is perpendicular to the plane of the loop.
Because of their meager radiation resistance, the properties of small loops tend to more often be intensively optimized than are full-size antennas, and the properties optimized for transmitting are not quite the same as for receiving. With full-size antennas, the reciprocity between transmitting and receiving usually makes the distinctions unimportant, but since a few radio frequency properties important for receiving differ from those for transmitting – particularly below about 10~20 MHz – small loops intended for receiving have slight differences from small transmitting loops. They are discussed separately in following two subsections, although many of the comments apply to both.
A typical diameter of receiving loops with "air centers" is between . To increase the magnetic field in the loop and thus its efficiency, while greatly reducing size, the coil of wire is often wound around a ferrite core rod magnetic core; this is called a ferrite loop antenna. Such ferrite loop antennas are used in almost all AM broadcast receivers with the notable exception of , since the antenna for the mediumwave needs to be outside the obstructing metal car chassis.
Small loop antennas are also popular for radio direction finding, in part due to their exceedingly sharp, clear "null" along the loop axis: When the loop axis is aimed directly at the transmitter, the target signal abruptly vanishes.
The radiation resistance of a small loop is generally much smaller than the loss resistance due to the conductors composing the loop, leading to a poor antenna efficiency. Consequently, most of the power delivered to a small loop antenna will be converted to heat by the loss resistance, rather than doing useful work pushing out radio waves or gathering them in.
Wasted power is undesirable for a transmitting antenna, however for a receiving antenna, the inefficiency is not important at frequencies below about 15 MHz. At these lower frequencies, due to atmospheric noise (static) and man-made noise (interference), even a weak signal from an inefficient antenna is far stronger than the internal thermal or Johnson noise generated in the radio receiver's own circuitry, so the weak signal from a loop antenna can be amplified without degrading the signal-to-noise ratio, since both are magnified by the same amplification factor.CCIR 258; CCIR 322.
For example, at 1 MHz, the man-made noise might be 55 dB above the thermal noise floor. If a small loop antenna's loss is 50 dB (as if the antenna included a 50 dB attenuator), then the electrical inefficiency of that antenna will have little influence on the receiving system's signal-to-noise ratio. In contrast, at quieter frequencies at about 20 MHz and above, an antenna with a 50 dB loss could degrade the received signal-to-noise ratio by up to 50 dB, resulting in terrible performance.
However, as frequency rises, there is no need to suffer bad performance: At the higher, quieter frequencies, the wavelengths become short enough that a halo antenna is small enough to be feasible – at 20 MHz it is a little less than in diameter, and proportionally shrinks as the frequency increases. So the quieter the rising frequency gets, the more convenient it is to replace a small receiving loop with a larger, but still relatively compact, halo antenna. It is mostly a direct substitute for a small receiving loop, but with superior signal reception.
Another way of looking at a small loop as an antenna is to consider it simply as an inductive coil coupling to the magnetic field in the direction perpendicular to plane of the coil, according to Ampère's law. Then consider a propagating radio wave also perpendicular to that plane. Since the magnetic (and electric) fields of an electromagnetic wave in free space are transverse (no component in the direction of propagation), it can be seen that this magnetic field and that of a small loop antenna will be at right angles, and thus not coupled. For the same reason, an electromagnetic wave propagating within the plane of the loop, with its magnetic field perpendicular to that plane, is coupled to the magnetic field of the coil. Since the transverse magnetic and electric fields of a propagating electromagnetic wave are at right angles, the electric field of such a wave is also in the plane of the loop, and thus the antenna's polarization (which is always specified as being the orientation of the electric, not the magnetic field) is said to be in that plane.
Thus, mounting the loop in a horizontal plane will produce an omnidirectional antenna which is horizontally polarized; mounting the loop vertically yields a vertically polarized, weakly directional antenna, but with exceptionally sharp nulls along the axis of the loop. Size criteria that favor loops with a perimeter of or smaller ensure the sharpness of the loop's receiving null. Small loops intended for transmitting (see below) are designed as large as feasible to improve the marginal radiation resistance, sacrificing the sharp null by using perimeters as large as to
Small-loop receiving antennas are also almost always resonated using a parallel-plate capacitor, which makes their reception narrow-band, sensitive only to a very specific frequency. This allows the antenna, in conjunction with a (variable) tuning capacitor, to act as a tuned input stage to the receiver's front-end, in lieu of a preselector.
The procedure is to rotate the loop antenna to find the direction where the signal vanishes – the "null" direction. Since the null occurs at two opposite directions along the axis of the loop, other means must be employed to determine which side of the antenna the nulled signal is on. One method is to rely on a second loop antenna located at a second location, or to move the receiver to that other location, thus relying on triangulation.
Instead of triangulation, a second dipole or vertical antenna can be electrically combined with a loop or a loopstick antenna. Called a sense antenna, connecting and matching the second antenna changes the combined radiation pattern to a cardioid, with a null in only one (less precise) direction. The general direction of the transmitter can be determined using the sense antenna, and then disconnecting the sense antenna returns the sharp nulls in the loop antenna pattern, allowing a precise bearing to be determined.
AM broadcast receivers (and other low frequency radios for the consumer market) typically use small-loop antennas, even when a telescoping antenna may be attached for FM reception. A variable capacitor connected across the loop forms a resonant circuit that also tunes the receiver's input stage as that capacitor tracks the main tuning. A multiband receiver may contain tap points along the loop winding in order to tune the loop antenna at widely different frequencies.
In AM radios built prior to the invention of ferrite in the mid-20th century, the antenna might consist of dozens of turns of wire mounted on the back wall of the radio – a planar helical antenna – or a separate, rotatable, furniture-sized rack looped with wire – a frame antenna.
Inclusion of a magnetically permeable core increases the radiation resistance of a small loop, mitigating the inefficiency due to ohmic losses. Like all small antennas, such antennas are tiny compared to their antenna aperture. A typical AM broadcast radio loop antenna wound on ferrite may have a cross sectional area of only at a frequency at which an ideal (lossless) antenna would have an effective area some hundred million times larger. Even accounting for the resistive losses in a ferrite rod antenna, its effective receiving area may exceed the loop's physical area by a factor of 100.
A small transmitting loop antenna with a perimeter of 10% or less of the wavelength will have a relatively constant current distribution along the conductor, and the main lobe will be in the plane of the loop, so it will show the null familiar in the radiation pattern of small receiving loops, but more like signal dimming, instead of complete signal loss shown by sub- direction-finding loops. Loops of any size between 10% and 30% of a wavelength in perimeter, up to halo antenna, can be built and tuned with series capacitors to resonance, but their non-uniform current will reduce or eliminate the small loops' pattern null. A capacitor is required for a circumference less than a half wave, and an inductor is required for loops more than a half wave and less than a full wave.
Loops in the small transmitting loops' size range may have neither the uniform current of very small loops, nor the sinusoidal current of large loops, and thus cannot be analyzed using the assumptions useful for the small receiving loops nor full-wave loop antennas. Performance is most conveniently determined using NEC analysis. Antennas within this size range include the halo (see above) and the G0CWT (Edginton) loop. For brevity, introductory articles on small loop antennas sometimes confine discussion to loops smaller in circumference than , since for loops with circumferences larger than , the simplifying assumption of uniform current around the entire loop becomes untenably inaccurate. Since the larger halo also has a simple analysis, moderate-sized small-loop antennas and their complicated analysis are often omitted, leaving many otherwise-well-informed antenna builders in the dark regarding the performance obtainable with moderately small loops.
In military use, the antenna may be built using a one- or two-conductor in diameter. The loop itself is typically in diameter.
Making the loop larger in diameter will lower the gap voltage, as well as improving efficiency; however, all other efficiency improvements will tend to increase the gap voltage: efficiency may be increased by making the loop from a thicker conductor; other measures to lower the conductor's Copper loss include welding or brazing the connections, rather than soldering. But because reducing loss resistance increases the antenna's Q factor, the consequence of better efficiency is even greater voltage across the capacitor at the loop's gap. For a given frequency, a smaller small loop is more dangerous than a larger small loop, and perversely, a comparatively efficient small transmitting loop is more dangerous than an inefficient one.
The RF burn and electric shock problems raised by capacitive loading of small loops is more serious than for inductive loading of whip antenna or . The high antenna voltage is generally troublesome only on the upper end of a whip's loading coil, since it is spread across the extended coil length, whereas high voltages on a loop's capacitor plates are (ideally) at maximum over all of the plate surfaces. Further, the high-voltage tips of monopoles and dipoles typically are mounted high up and far out of reach, which limits opportunities for radio-frequency burns. In contrast, small-loop / "magnetic" antennas better tolerate being mounted close to the ground, so all parts of loop antennas, including the high-voltage parts, are more often within easy reach.
In summary: the high voltages from high pose a greater threat in small loops than most other small antennas, and demand greater caution, even for very low transmit power.
If both the main and the feeder loops are single-turn, then the impedance transformation ratio of the nested loops is almost exactly the ratio of the areas of the two loops separately, or the square of the ratio of their diameters (assuming they have the same shape). Typical feeder loops are to the size of the antenna's main loop, which gives transform ratios of 64:1 to 25:1, respectively. Adjusting the proximity and angle of the feeder loop to the main loop, and distorting the feeder's shape, both make small-to-moderate changes to the transform ratio, and allows for fine adjustment of the feedpoint impedance. For main loops with multiple turns, more often used for mediumwave frequencies, the feeder loop can be one or two turns on the same frame as the main loop's turns, in which case the impedance transform ratio is very nearly the square of the ratio of the number of turns on each loop.
Likewise, coupling coils used for inductive charging systems, regardless of whether they are used at low frequency or high frequency radio frequency, are excluded from this article, since they are not (or ideally, should not be) antenna types.
Although they are not radio antennas, these systems do operate at radio frequencies, and they involve the use of small magnetic coils, which are called "antennas" in the trade. However, they are more usefully thought of as analogs to the windings in loosely coupled . Although the magnetic coils in these inductive systems sometimes seem indistinguishable from the small loop antennas discussed above, such devices can only operate over short distances, and are specifically designed to avoid transmitting or receiving . Because inductive heating systems and RFID readers only use near-field alternating magnetic fields, their performance criteria are dissimilar to the far-field radio antennas discussed in this article.
Shape
Radiation pattern
Halo antennas
Practical use
Electrical analysis
The halo's gap
Small loops
where is the area enclosed by the loop, is the wavelength, and is the number of turns of the conductor around the loop.
Small receiving loops
Radiation pattern and polarization
Receiver input tuning
Direction finding with small loops
AM broadcast receiving antennas
Ferrite loop antenna
Small transmitting loops
Size, shape, efficiency, and pattern
Use for land-mobile radio
Power limits and RF safety
Feeder loops
Antenna-like non-antenna loops
RFID coils and induction heating
Footnotes
External links
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