Radiation Pattern
Like a dipole antenna, a monopole has an omnidirectional radiation pattern. That is it radiates equal power in all azimuthal directions perpendicular to the antenna, but the radiated power varies with elevation angle, with the radiation dropping off to zero at the zenith, on the antenna axis. It radiates vertically polarized radio waves. Certain types of monopole antennas, e.g. some helical antennas, can radiate circularly polarized waves.
A monopole can be visualized as being formed by replacing one half of a vertical dipole antenna with a ground plane at right-angles to the remaining half. If the ground plane is large enough, the radio waves reflected from the ground plane will seem to come from an image antenna forming the missing half of the dipole, which adds to the direct radiation to form a dipole radiation pattern. So the pattern of a monopole with a perfectly conducting, infinite ground plane is identical to the top half of a dipole pattern, with its maximum radiation in the horizontal direction, perpendicular to the antenna. Because it radiates only into the space above the ground plane, or half the space of a dipole antenna, a monopole antenna will have a gain of twice (3 dBi over) the gain of a similar dipole antenna, and a radiation resistance half that of a dipole. Thus a quarter-wave monopole, the most common type, will have a gain of 5.19 dBi and a radiation resistance of about 36.8 ohms if it is mounted above a good ground plane.
The general effect of electrically small ground planes, as well as imperfectly conducting earth grounds, is to tilt the direction of maximum radiation up to higher elevation angles.
Read more about this topic: Monopole Antenna
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