On the excitation of a circular loop antenna by travelling-and standing-wave current distributions

Abstract

Presented here is an exact formulation of the electric and magnetic (EM) fields radiated by a circular loop antenna, assuming both travelling- and standing-wave current distributions. By using a differential current element positioned in an azimuthal direction as the starting point, the paper systematically develops the EM fields radiated by the circular loop via a vector potential theory. This approach leads to a general integral representation for the radiation characteristics of the loop antenna where we completely evaluate the resulting expressions, when the excitations of the loop assume travelling- and standing-wave distribution forms. In addition, this paper briefly examines a method to generate approximately such current distributions by coupling the loop to a two- or four-wire transmission line. Furthermore, the paper discusses a graphical representation of the current distribution plotted as a function of frequency or loop size. From the field expressions determined, we derive generalized closed...