Yagi Antenna / Yagi-Uda Antenna

- the Yagi antenna sometimes called the Yagi-Uda RF antenna is

widely used where gain and directivity are required from an RF
antenna design.
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Yagi antenna tutorial includes:

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Yagi antenna theory
Yagi antenna gain
Yagi impedance & matching
The Yagi antenna or Yagi-Uda antenna / aerial is one of the most successful RF antenna designs
for directive antenna applications.
The Yagi or Yagi-Uda antenna is used in a wide variety of applications where an RF antenna design
with gain and directivity is required.
The Yagi has become particularly popular for television reception, but it is also used in very many
other domestic and commercial applications where an RF antenna is needed that has gain and
directivity.
Not only is the gain of the Yagi antenna important as it enables better levels of signal to noise
ratio to be achieved, but also the directivity can be used to reduce interference levels by
focussing the transmitted power on areas where it is needed, or receiving signals best from where
the emanate.

Typical Yagi Uda antenna used for television reception

Yagi antenna history

The full name for the antenna is the Yagi-Uda antenna. The Yagi antenna derives its name from its
two Japanese inventors Yagi and his student Uda. The RF antenna design concept was first
outlined in a paper that Yagi himself presented in 1928. Since then its use has grown rapidly to
the stage where today a television antenna is synonymous with an RF antenna having a central
boom with lots of elements attached.
The design for the Yagi antenna appears to have been initially developed by Yagi's colleague
Shintaro Uda, but original papers were all in Japanese and accordingly the design was not
publicised outside Japan.
It was Professor Hidetsugu Yagi who wrote papers in English and as a result the design is often
attributed only to Yagi.
Yagi himself did not aim to steal the publicity, in view of his English papers, the design now bears
his name rather than that of Uda, although the correct name for the antenna is the Yagi-Uda
antenna.

Yagi antenna - the basics

The Yagi antenna design has a dipole as the main radiating or driven element. Further 'parasitic'
elements are added which are not directly connected to the driven element.
These parasitic elements within the Yagi antenna pick up power from the dipole and re-radiate it.
The phase is in such a manner that it affects the properties of the RF antenna as a whole, causing
power to be focussed in one particular direction and removed from others.

basic concept of Yagi Uda antenna

The parasitic elements of the Yagi antenna operate by re-radiating their signals in a slightly
different phase to that of the driven element. In this way the signal is reinforced in some
directions and cancelled out in others. It is found that the amplitude and phase of the current that
is induced in the parasitic elements is dependent upon their length and the spacing between them
and the dipole or driven element.
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Yagi Uda antenna showing element types

There are three types of element within a Yagi antenna:

Driven element:

The driven element is the Yagi antenna element to which power is

applied. It is normally a half wave dipole or often a folded dipole.

Reflector :

The Yagi antenna will generally only have one reflector. This is behind the main

driven element, i.e. the side away from the direction of maximum sensitivity.
Further reflectors behind the first one add little to the performance. However many
designs use reflectors consisting of a reflecting plate, or a series of parallel rods simulating
a reflecting plate. This gives a slight improvement in performance, reducing the level of
radiation or pick-up from behind the antenna, i.e. in the backwards direction.
Typically a reflector will add around 4 or 5 dB of gain in the forward direction.

Director:

There may be none, one of more reflectors in the Yagi antenna. The director or

directors are placed in front of the driven element, i.e. in the direction of maximum
sensitivity. Typically each director will add around 1 dB of gain in the forward direction,
although this level reduces as the number of directors increases.
The antenna exhibits a directional pattern consisting of a main forward lobe and a number of
spurious side lobes. The main one of these is the reverse lobe caused by radiation in the direction
of the reflector. The antenna can be optimised to either reduce this or produce the maximum level
of forward gain. Unfortunately the two do not coincide exactly and a compromise on the
performance has to be made depending upon the application.

Yagi antenna radiation pattern

Yagi antenna advantages

The Yagi antenna offers many advantages for its use. The antenna provides many advantages in a
number of applications:

Antenna has gain allowing lower strength signals to be received.

Yagi antenna has directivity enabling interference levels to be minimised.

Straightforward construction. - the Yagi antenna allows all constructional elements to be

made from rods simplifying construction.

The construction enables the antenna to be mounted easily on vertical and other poles
with standard mechanical fixings

The Yagi antenna also has a number of disadvantages that need to be considered.

For high gain levels the antenna becomes very long

Gain limited to around 20dB or so for a single antenna

Typical Yagi Uda antenna used for television reception

The Yagi antenna is a particularly useful form of RF antenna design. It is widely used in
applications where an RF antenna design is required to provide gain and directivity. In this way
the optimum transmission and reception conditions can be obtained.

Yagi Antenna Gain & Directivity

- Yagi antenna gain is dependent upon many factors including the number of elements,
spacing and several other minor factors..

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Yagi impedance & matching

One of the chief reasons for using a Yagi antenna is the gain it provides.
The Yagi or Yagi-Uda antenna gain is of great importance, because it enables all the transmitted power to be
directed into the area where it is required, or when used for reception, it enables the maximum signal to be
received from the same area.
Gain for reception and transmission are equal when a passive antenna is used - i.e. one without any active
elements.

Yagi gain / beamwidth considerations

It is found that as the Yagi gain increases, so the beam-width decreases. Antennas with a very high level of
gain are very directive. Therefore high gain and narrow beam-width sometimes have to be balanced to provide
the optimum performance for a given application

Yagi-Uda antenna gain vs beam-width

Yagi-Uda antenna gain considerations

A number of features of the Yagi design affect the overall gain:

Number of elements in the Yagi:

One of the main factors affecting the Yagi antenna gain, is the

number of elements in the design. Typically a reflector is the first element added in any yagi design as
this gives the most additional gain. Directors are then added.

Element spacing:

The spacing can have an impact on the Yagi gain, although not as much as the

number of elements. Typically a wide-spaced beam, i.e. one with a wide spacing between the
elements gives more gain than one that is more compact. The most critical element positions are the
reflector and first director, as their spacing governs that of any other elements that may be added.

Antenna length:

When computing he optimal positions for the various elements it has been shown

that in a multi-element Yagi array, the gain is generally proportional to the length of the array. There is
certain amount of latitude in the element positions.
The gain of a Yagi antenna is governed mainly by the number of elements in the particular RF antenna.
However the spacing between the elements also has an effect. As the overall performance of the RF antenna
has so many inter-related variables, many early designs were not able to realise their full performance. Today
computer programmes are used to optimise RF antenna designs before they are even manufactured and as a
result the performance of antennas has been improved.

Yagi gain vs number of elements

Although there is variation between different designs and the way Yagi-Uda antennas are constructed, it is
possible to place some very approximate figures for anticipated gain against the number of elements in the
design.

APPROXIMATE YAGI-UDA ANTENNA GAIN LEVELS

NUMBER OF ELEMENTS

APPROX ANTICIPATED GAIN

DB OVER DIPOLE

7.5

8.5

9.5

10.5

11.5

It should be noted that these figures are only very approximate.

As an additional rule of thumb, once there are around four or five directors, each additional director adds
around an extra 1dB of gain for directors up to about 15 or so directors. The figure falls with the increasing
number of directors.

Yagi Front to Back ratio

One of the figures associated with the Yagi antenna gain is what is termed the front to back ratio, F/B. This is
simply a ratio of the signal level in the forward direction to the reverse direction. This is normally expressed in
dB.
Front to back ratio

Signal in forward direction / signal in reverse direction

Yagi front to back ratio

Front to back ratio

F/B

The front to back ratio is important in circumstances where interference or coverage in the reverse direction
needs to be minimised. Unfortunately the conditions within the antenna mean that optimisation has to be
undertaken for either front to back ratio, or maximum forward gain. Conditions for both features do not
coincide, but the front to back ratio can normally be maximised for a small degradation of the forward gain.

Yagi Feed Impedance

- notes and details of the essentials of Yagi impedance matching, what governs it and
the ways of Yagi matching.

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Yagi impedance & matching

As with any other type of antenna, ensuring that a good match between the feeder and the antenna itself are
crucial to ensure the performance of the antenna can be optimised.

The impedance of the driven element is greatly affected by the parasitic elements and therefore,
arrangements needed to be incorporated into the basic design to ensure that a good match is obtained.

Feed impedance of Yagi driven element

It is possible to vary the feed impedance of a Yagi antenna over a wide range. Although the impedance of the
dipole itself would be 73 ohms in free space, this is altered considerably by the proximity of the parasitic
elements.
The spacing, their length and a variety of other factors all affect the feed impedance presented by the dipole
to the feeder. In fact altering the element spacing has a greater effect on the impedance than it does the gain,
and accordingly setting the required spacing can be used as one design technique to fine tune the required
feed impedance.
Nevertheless the proximity of the parasitic elements usually reduces the impedance below the 50 ohm level
normally required. It is found that for element spacing distances less than 0.2 wavelengths the impedance
falls rapidly away.

Yagi matching techniques

To overcome this, a variety of techniques can be used. Each one has its own advantages and disadvantages,
both in terms of performance and mechanical suitability. No one solution is suitable for all applications.
The solutions below are some of the main solutions used and applicable to many types of antenna. There also
not the only ones:

Balun:

A balun is an impedance matching transformer and can be used to match a great variety of

impedance ratios, provided the impedance is known when the balun is designed.

Folded dipole:

One method which can effectively be implemented to increase the feed impedance is

to use a folder dipole. In its basic form it raises the impedance four fold, although by changing various
parameters it is possible t raise the impedance by different factors.

Delta match:

This method of Yagi impedance matching involves "fanning out" the feed connection to

the driven element.

Gamma match:

The gamma match solution to Yagi matching involves connecting the out of the

coax braid to the centre of the driven element, and the centre via a capacitor to a point away from the
centre, dependent upon the impedance increase required.
Balun for Yagi matching
The balun is a very straightforward method of providing impedance matching. 4:1 baluns are widely available
for applications including matching folded dipoles to 75 coax.

Baluns like these are just RF transformers. They should have as wide a frequency range as possible, but like
any wound components they have a limited bandwidth. However if designed for use with a specific Yagi
antenna, this should not be a problem.
One of the problems with a balun is the cost - they tend to be more costly than some other forms of Yagi
impedance matching. They may also be power limited for a given size.

Folded dipole
The folded dipole is a standard approach to increasing the Yagi impedance. It is widely used on Yagi antennas
including the television and broadcast FM antennas.
The simple folded dipole provides an increase in impedance by a factor of four. Under free space conditions,
the dipole impedance on its own is raised from 75 for a standard dipole to 300 for the folded dipole.

Simple folded dipole antenna

Note on folded dipole:

The folded dipole is a from of dipole that has a higher impedance than the standard half wave dipole - in the
standard version it has four times the impedance. However different ratios can be obtained by changing the
mechanical attributes.

Click for a Folded dipole tutorial

Another advantage of using a folded dipole for Yagi impedance matching is that the folded dipole has a flatter
impedance versus frequency characteristic than the simple dipole. This enables it and hence the Yagi to
operate over a wider frequency range.
While a standard folded dipole using the same thickness conductor for the top and bottom conductors within
the folded dipole will give a fourfold increase in impedance, by varying the thickness of both, it is possible to
change the impedance multiplication factor to considerably different values.

Delta match
The delta match for of Yagi matching is one of the more straightforward solutions. It involves fanning out the
ends of the balanced feeder to join the continuous radiating antenna driven element at a point to provide the
required match.

Delta match for dipole - often used for Yagi impedance matching
Both the side length and point of connection need to be adjusted to optimise the match.
One of the drawbacks for using the Delta match for providing Yagi impedance matching is that it is unable to
provide any removal of reactive impedance elements. As a result a stub may be used.

Gamma match
The gamma match is often used for providing Yagi impedance matching. It is relatively simple to implement.

Gamma match for dipole - often used for Yagi impedance matching
As seen in the diagram, the outer of the coax feeder is connected to the centre of the driven element of the
Yagi antenna where the voltage is zero. As a result of the fact that the voltage is zero, the driven element may
also be connected directly to a metal boom at this point without any loss of performance.
The inner conductor of the coax is then taken to a point further out on the driven element - it is taken to a tap
point to provide the correct match. Any inductance is tuned out using the series capacitor.

When adjusting the RF antenna design, both the variable capacitor and the point at which the arm contacts
the driven element are adjusted. Once a value has been ascertained for the variable capacitor, its value can be
measured and a fixed component inserted if required.
By Ian Poole