EVALUATION OF ANTENNA FACTOR OF BICONICAL ANTENNAS FOR EMC MEASUREMENTS

Broadband antennas such as biconical antennas and log-periodic dipole antennas are generally used in automatic EMC measurements. However, these broadband antennas have not been used for accurate measurement because accurate specifications for them are lacking. Therefore, more accurate analysis is urgently required by the CISPR (International Special Committee on Radio Interference),to establish the Specifications for broadband antennas for EMC measurements. In this paper, the AF of biconical antennas is calculated by using Moment Methods. The frequency characteristics and antenna height dependency of AF are presented. AF is also measured and compared to the data obtained by the calculations. Good agreement between the calculations and measurements is achieved, indicating the usefulness of our computation method. In addition, the effect of antenna separation distance and transmitting antenna height on AF is investigated. The calculated AF deviation from the reference value is nearly 0 dB except for certain antenna arrangements. In these antenna arrangements, the field becomes null at the receiving antenna and widely varies in magnitude and phase around the null points. Therefore, the antenna is immersed in a non-uniform field, while the AF is defined on the assumption of a uniform field. Consequently, the erroneous AF will be derived from measurements around these null points and it will be greatly different from that obtained at other antenna heights. Thus, it is better to avoid these conditions during actual measurements. The effect of the ground plane on AF is also evaluated. AF is shown to be seriously affected by the ground plane especially at frequencies around 90 MHz. It should be noted that AF deviation has crests corresponding to the null field at 300 MHz. The obtained data will be useful in establishing specifications of biconical antennas for EMC measurements.