ANTENNA DESIGN CLASS EE522 SPRING 2017 FINAL PROJECT
Design and Simulation of 12 Elements Yagi-Uda Antenna for UHF
Channel 14 (485 MHz)
Mansoor Sultan
University of Kentucky
A Yagi-Uda antenna for UHF channel 14 (485 MHz) was
designed and simulated. The antenna has twelve elements: driver,
reflector, and ten directors. The effect of metallic boom was
observed. The obtained gain and directivity are presented. the
effect of fabrications errors is demonstrated.
Index Terms—Antenna, Yagi, Uda, UHF, Thin wire code,
Simulation.
I. I NTRODUCTION
T HE Yagi-Uda is an array antenna that was introduced
by Hidetsugu Yagi and Shintaro Uda in 1926 [1]. Since
then, the theory of Yagi-Uda was applied in different antenna
designs at different wavelength [2]–[4]. The simple Yagi-Uda
antenna consist of dipoles array, the energized dipole called
the driver element and the other as parasitic elements. one of
parasitic elements act as reflector for the back beam and the
other elements act as director for front beam. Thus, the beam
of Yagi-Uda antenna will be an endfire pattern. The current in
parasitic elements is an induced current due to the near field
from the driver element.
To analyze the operation of Yagi-Uda antenna it is convenient
to start with the simple array theory for Yagi-antenna shown
in Fig. 1.
Fig. 1: Yagi-Uda antenna [5]
If the element spaced uniformly with small separation, the
field incident on the parasitic element will be equal to the
radiated field from driver.
Eincident = Edriver (1)
1
The incident field will induce a current in the parasitic element
that radiate electric field.
E parasitic = −Edriver = −Eincident (2)
Using the induced current we can calculate the array factor
(AF) as in the following equation.
N−1
AF = ∑ In e jβ nd cos θ (3)
n=0
N is the number of elements, β = 2πλ , θ is the azimuthal angle,
and d is the separation between the elements. where the later
sometimes is deferent for driver and reflector depends on the
design. Pocklington’s integral equation is another way to find
the far field of Yagi-Uda antenna, which is explained in [5].
In this work, we propose a design of Yagi-Uda antenna for
channel 14 UHF. The reasons behind choosing this antenna
are its simplicity and easy fabrication process.
II. A NTENNA D ESIGN
The goal of this work is to design a Yag-Uda antenna for
channel 14 UHF with gain of 12.25 dBd and test the effect
of metallic boom and fabrication error. The array dimensions
were calculated from the following table using the forth col-
umn for element lengths. Elements dimension were calculated
in meters from their wavelength equivalent length to operate
with the specified frequency.
TABLE I: Optimized Lengths of Parasitic Dipoles for Yagi-
Uda Array Antennas of Six Different Boom Lengths, LB [6]
The optimal length for parasitic elements with metallic
boom where adjusted to achieve the best gain by increasing
ANTENNA DESIGN CLASS EE522 SPRING 2017 FINAL PROJECT 2

their length using the radius to wavelength ratio. The graph

below shows the optimal increment in parasitic element length
as function of the boom diameter to wavelength ratio.

Fig. 3: E-Plane for far-field

Fig. 2: Effect of metallic boom on the parasitic elements length The half power beam width (HP) was calculated from the
[6] Fig. 3 as 36◦ . and the side lobe levels was around -17 dB as
shown in Fig.5 The 3D filed pattern is shown in Fig.4

From the figure above it was found that the parasitic element
length has to be increased by a ratio of 0.0055λ to meet the
optimum gain.

III. A NTENNA S IMULATION

A. Design Test

The simulation of this antenna was done in three steps: First

step was to simulate the antenna without metallic boom and
compute the gain, directivity and field profile using thin-wire Fig. 4: 3D far-field pattern
code that was written by Dr. Young. The second step was to
simulate the same antenna with metallic boom and adjusted
parasitic elements length according to Fig. 2. Finally, test the
fabrication error effects on the antenna characteristics. 0

1) Without Metallic Boom -10

In this part of work, the supporting boom assumed to be an

-20
insulator, and the length of elements was calculated from table
20Log 10 (E )

I without any adjustment. The driver element is a resonant -30

half-wave dipole of length as 0.475λ . The obtained gain of this

antenna was 11.983 dBd (Directivity of 25.9) and maximum -40

beam at θ = 90◦ . The side lobe levels is -17.82 dB. The -50
normalized E-plane field is shown in Fig. 3 below. The gain is
lower than expected gain and that could be a result of the exact -60

resonant length for the driver dipole which was assumed to be 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350

0.475λ . The later length is useful for a dipole with diameter to

length (L/2a) ratio of 50, while the used dipole ratio is around Fig. 5: Far-field pattern in log scale
55.
ANTENNA DESIGN CLASS EE522 SPRING 2017 FINAL PROJECT 3

2) With Metallic Boom

0

Most of Yagi-Uda antenna has a metallic support boom. -1

This boom has some effects on the radiated field and antenna -2
characteristics. When the metallic boom was added to the an- -3
tenna, The resulted gain enhanced to 12.0581 dBd (directivity -4

20Log(E )
of 26.35 ). The effect of boom on field magnitude is depicted
-5
in Fig. 5.
-6

-7

-8

Without boom
-9
With boom

-10
60 70 80 90 100 110 120

Fig. 8: Far-filed pattern in log scale

The frequency analysis for the antenna could be more

effective to test the boom effect. The reflection coefficient
and input impedance were computed for both cases with and
without boom. Fig 6 and 7 show the effect of boom on the
reflection coefficient and input impedance respectively
Fig. 6: Far-field E-plane for antenna with and without boom

For better analysis the log scale plot for power were plotted
to see the effect on the HP angle as shown in Fig. 6 and 7
below. 1
Without Boom
0.9 With Boom

0.8

0 0.7
Reflection coefficient

0.6
-5

0.5
-10
0.4
-15
20Log(E )

0.3

-20
0.2

-25 0.1
100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Frequency (MHz)
-30

-35 Without boom Fig. 9: Boom effect on reflection coefficient

With boom

-40
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350

Fig. 7: Far-field E-plane for antenna with and without boom

With closer focus on the -3 dB region we can see the effect

of boom on HP very clear as shown in the next figure where It can be inferred that the resonant frequency get shifted to
the HP getting narrower with boom. a lower frequency with metallic boom.
ANTENNA DESIGN CLASS EE522 SPRING 2017 FINAL PROJECT 4

0
1200
100 Design Length
With Boom -0.5 Shorten Length
Without Boom
-1
1000
50 -1.5

-2

20Log(E )
800
)

-2.5
Input impedance (

0
400 450 500 550 -3
600
-3.5

-4
400
-4.5

-5
200 70 75 80 85 90 95 100 105 110

0
Fig. 12: Shorten elements effect on HP
100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Frequency ( MHz )

Fig. 10: Boom effect on input impedance IV. C ONCLUSION

In conclusion, The designed antenna yield again slightly
lower than expected from Table I, and that is due to the chosen
From the figure above it can be seen that the input driver length. Where the length set to be for an individual
impedance decreases at the resonance frequency with the resonant dipole which is not the case of the design. However,
presence of metallic boom. The presence of metallic boom enhanced the gain of the
proposed antenna. The test of fabrication accuracy shows that
the length of array elements is an significant factor for the
B. Fabrication error Effects gain, and that is due to the relation between the dipole length
and beam width.
Sometimes, the fabrication process combined with some
errors due to the machines or limited manufacturing options R EFERENCES
that compromise the design specifications. In this step, It was [1] H. YAGI and S. Uda, “Projector of the sharpest beam of electric waves,”
assumed that the elements are shorter than the design length Proceedings of the Imperial Academy, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 49–52, 1926.
by 2 mm. The resulted gain due to the shorten elements was [2] R. S. Savelev, O. N. Sergaeva, D. G. Baranov, A. E. Krasnok,
and A. Alù, “Dynamically reconfigurable metal-semiconductor yagi-uda
11.8396 dB which is lower than the obtained from the design nanoantenna,” arXiv preprint arXiv:1702.02892, 2017.
in section A. The far-field of the fabricated array with the [3] X. Chen, W. Yu, W. Yue, P. Yao, and W. Liu, “A design of nano-optical
design one is shown in Fig.10. yagi-uda antenna with high forward directivity,” Microwave and Optical
Technology Letters, vol. 59, no. 4, pp. 786–789, 2017.
[4] J. Liu, F. Dai, Y. Zhang, X. Yu, L. Cai, P. Zuo, and M. Wang, “Monopole
quasi-yagi antenna on polyimide substrate for flexible electronics,” in
0 Seventh International Conference on Electronics and Information En-
gineering. International Society for Optics and Photonics, 2017, pp.
-5 1 032 227–1 032 227.
[5] C. A. Balanis, Antenna theory: analysis and design. John Wiley & Sons,
-10 2016.
[6] P. P. Viezbicke, “Yagi antenna design,” Final Report National Bureau of
-15 Standards, Boulder, CO. Time and Frequency Div., 1976.
20Log(E )

-20

-25

-30

-35
Design Length
Shorten Length
-40
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350

Fig. 11: Shorten elements effect on far-field pattern

With focus on HP of the pattern as in the Fig. 11 below. It

can be seen that HP increases as the element length decreases.
Therefore, the gain decreases.