Calculation of Site Attenuation for Calculable Dipole Antennas

Abstract

This paper presents a method for calculating the site attenuation (SA) of an open-area test site (OATS) for a pair of calculable dipole antennas with a 3-dB hybrid balun in the frequency range of 30 MHz to 1 GHz. The SA was directly derived using the concept of power mismatch and dissipative loss from the SA measurement system instead of the concept of substitution loss. Two types of SA formulas using the power loss concept on the treatment of the OATS are presented. The first is the SA formula related to knowing only the value of the SA. The other is the SA formula that analyzed the effects of each part of the SA. Additionally, the constituent losses of the SA measurement system are discussed using the derived SA formula. The analysis of the results showed that the SA could be successfully characterized individually from the loss of the OATS. It also showed that SA is expressed as two kinds of losses: the balanced port-mismatch losses of transmit and receive baluns and the half-space dissipative loss. The resultant SA showed good agreement with the results calculated from the S-parameters as well as with the measured results.

Keywords

• calculable dipole antenna
• horizontal polarization
• mismatch and dissipative loss
• site attenuation
• vertical polarization