MF digital AM station antennas

Abstract

It is very important having the proper antenna, specially in the MF AM band where achieving the necessary bandwidth in the antenna impedance is a difficult task. This problem is critical in the lower frequencies were the antenna matching to the transmission line generally is very sharp and the best match is obtained only at the carrier frequency with an appreciable power reflection in the lateral frequency bands. This problem is not very important in the classical AM transmissions were the maximum transmitted power is located at the carrier frequency and only a fraction in the upper and lower lateral bands. Of course this produces some distortion in the AM transmission but in this case the quality of the audio is not really of high fidelity, like in an FM transmission, due to a lot of factors, one of them the lack of the full audio spectrum. This problem can be corrected with high fidelity audio transmitters and specially with digital transmission in order to achieve CD quality audio and here the transmitting antenna plays an important role. In this paper MF AM antenna systems are analyzed not only from the input impedance point of view, but with consideration of all the factors in order to determine the best system in bandwidth and radiation properties in different parts of the standard AM band. Cylindrical, type A, and Cantilever classical monopoles and the modern dipole type antenna systems are compared, to provide the criteria for choosing an optimum antenna for the future digital AM service. Examples of measured field strength as a function of distance in a flat region are presented in order to show the interesting MF AM possibilities for a digital service.