An Introduction to the Source Concept for Antennas

Abstract

Antenna parameters particularly relevant to electrically small antenna design are reviewed in this paper. Source current definitions are accentuated leading to the introduction of the source concept which advantageously utilize only spatially bounded quantities. The framework of the source concept incorporates powerful techniques such as structural and modal decomposition, operator’s inversion and current optimization, thus opening new, challenging possibilities for antenna design, analysis and synthesis.

Keywords

• Poynting theorem
• antenna theory
• stored energy
• quality factor Q
• source concept