Introduction:

Antenna can be defined as transmitting or radiating radio waves. These radio waves that are
radiated or transmitted are not confined in guiding structure but propagated in free spaces.
Antennas are widely used in communication, radar and radio astronomy. In communication,
an antenna is required in situations where it is impossible, uneconomical or impractical to
provide a guiding structure between the transmitter and receiver. For instance, in GPS system,
antennas must be used in communication system between satellites an vehicle on earth.
Meanwhile in broadcasting, where the purpose of is to send energy out in all directions, it is
more economical to use antennas since one transmitting terminal can serve unlimited number
of receivers (HK).
There are many types of antenna such as dipole antenna, folded dipole antenna, small pole
antenna, broadband antenna and many more (3). In this experiment dipole antenna was used
throughout the experiment. Despite its simplicity dipole antenna is very practical and in real
world(2)
This experiment was aimed to study the properties dipole antenna which the simplest type of
antenna. To achieve this, radiation patern and directivity were observed by varying the length
and conditions of dipole antennas. The other aim was to determine the directionality by
measuring the angular radiation patern. Besides, we also studied the ideal condition far field
distance of the antenna.
Theory :
In these experiment dipole antennas was set as receiving antenna while transmitting antenna
was pyramidal horn antenna. Dipole antenna consists of two linear conductors (rod) with
small gap between the rods at the centre. The two sides of the gap are connected to load in
receiving case. The Figure 1 shows the structure of dipole antenna:

Dipole antenna is a wire antenna which only receives polarised electromagnetic waves .So we
assumed that the transmitter and receiver antenna are polarised matched. The other theoretical
assumption that we had made are (labnote):
 The dipole antenna is Figure
a conductor
1 : Dipole Antenna
 Sinusoidal current distribution along the antenna for infinitesimally thin conductor.
 The antenna is thin enough and has large length to radius ratio (L/a) >60 – L is length
and a is radius of antenna.
 The length of gap between the conductors must be smaller than the wavelength of
radiation so that the current distribution is continuous along the antenna.
 The observation at point p is located in far field.

Far-field is a region which is far from antenna. In this region, the radiation pattern remains
the same regardless the distance. Besides,
Figure 2 : Farthis
fieldregion is denominated by electric and magnetic
condition
field perpendicular to each other(4) Far field conditions also require the angle between line
from the origin of the antenna to the p and line joining the end of antenna must
infinitesimally small such that the length of antenna does not matter as shown in Figure 2. In
order to satisfy far-field condition, the distance between the transmitting and point p must
 2
2L
r> (1)
lamda
L is length of horn antenna in largest dimension.