HIGH-TEMPERATURE SUPERCONDUCTING SMALL HELICAL ANTENNA

To realize a highly efficient small antenna, high-Tc superconductors are adopted to fabricate both a self-resonating helical radiator and a quarter-wave matching circuit. The actual gain and bandwidth measured at 478 MHz using a 1/45-wavelength radiator were respectively -1.5 dBi and 0.35%, indicating that this type of antenna has a high radiation efficiency and a fairly wide bandwidth. It is also confirmed through experiments and theoretical simulations that a decrease in the surface resistance of the radiator more effectively improves the radiation efficiency than a decrease in the surface resistance of the matching circuit.