Work

Active Antennas Beyond the Standard Impedance Matching Technique: Concepts and Applications

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: This paper presents a new design concept for improving active antennas’ performances beyond the standard impedance matching technique. The proposed approach expands the mismatch at the antenna-amplifier interface to create a voltage excess, transferred to the matched output receiver using a voltage-type amplifier instead of a power type. Compared with a standard dual-input-output matching, this leads to comparable bandwidth and DC consumption but significantly improves the peak gain, gain-bandwidth-product (GBWP), stability, and noise figure. Experiments with a conventional dipole antenna confirm an improvement factor near two on gain and GBWP. Stability improves by 10°, tending to reach the reference value of 60° phase margin for sound systems. Also, the noise figure significantly decreases by 4.5 dB on average. In addition, the newly introduced performance metric, typically normalized gain-bandwidth-product (NGBWP), dividing GBWP by the average amplifying stage’s gain and the passive antenna’s GBWP, is NGBWP${=}6.84$, far higher than the existing works peaking at 2. Finally, the proposed active dipole shows GBWP${=}2.68$, which is 15 times the passive dipole. These attractive characteristics make the present approach suitable for most wireless systems.

Source: IEEE Open Journal of Antennas and Propagation

DOI: 10.1109/ojap.2025.3550271

Author: Constant M. A. Niamien

Institutions: École Supérieure d'Ingénieurs en Génie Électrique, Institut de Recherche en Systèmes Electroniques Embarqués, Université de Rouen Normandie

Language: English

Topic: Antenna Design and Analysis

Subfield: Aerospace Engineering

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,075

Funder: Région Normandie