Mutual Impedance and Interaction Between Antennas
Current circulating in any antenna induces currents in all others. One can postulate a mutual impedance between two antennas that has the same significance as the in ordinary coupled inductors. The mutual impedance between two antennas is defined as:
where is the current flowing in antenna 1 and is the voltage that would have to be applied to antenna 2–with antenna 1 removed–to produce the current in the antenna 2 that was produced by antenna 1.
From this definition, the currents and voltages applied in a set of coupled antennas are:
where:
- is the voltage applied to the antenna
- is the impedance of antenna
- is the mutual impedance between antennas and
Note that, as is the case for mutual inductances,
This is a consequence of Lorentz reciprocity. If some of the elements are not fed (there is a short circuit instead a feeder cable), as is the case in television antennas (Yagi-Uda antennas), the corresponding are zero. Those elements are called parasitic elements. Parasitic elements are unpowered elements that either reflect or absorb and reradiate RF energy.
In some geometrical settings, the mutual impedance between antennas can be zero. This is the case for crossed dipoles used in circular polarization antennas.
Read more about this topic: Antenna (radio)
Famous quotes containing the words mutual and/or interaction:
“I have overlived the generation with which mutual labors & perils begat mutual confidence and influence.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)