Yagi-Uda Antenna - History

History

The Yagi-Uda antenna was invented in 1926 by Shintaro Uda of Tohoku Imperial University, Sendai, Japan, with the collaboration of Hidetsugu Yagi, also of Tohoku Imperial University. Hidetsugu Yagi attempted wireless energy transfer in February 1926 with this antenna. Yagi and Uda published their first report on the wave projector directional antenna. Yagi demonstrated a proof of concept, but the engineering problems proved to be more onerous than conventional systems.

Yagi published the first English-language reference on the antenna in a 1928 survey article on short wave research in Japan and it came to be associated with his name. However, Yagi always acknowledged Uda's principal contribution to the design, and the proper name for the antenna is, as above, the Yagi-Uda antenna (or array).

The Yagi was first widely used during World War II for airborne radar sets, because of its simplicity and directionality. Despite its being invented in Japan, many Japanese radar engineers were unaware of the design until very late in the war, partly due to rivalry between the Army and Navy. The Japanese military authorities first became aware of this technology after the Battle of Singapore when they captured the notes of a British radar technician that mentioned "yagi antenna". Japanese intelligence officers did not even recognise that Yagi was a Japanese name in this context. When questioned, the technician said it was an antenna named after a Japanese professor. (This story is analogous to the story of American intelligence officers interrogating German rocket scientists and finding out that Robert Goddard was the real pioneer of rocket technology even though he was not well known in the US at that time.)

A horizontally polarized array can be seen under the left leading edge of Grumman F4F, F6F, TBF Avenger carrier-based US Navy aircraft. Vertically polarized arrays can be seen on the cheeks of the P-61 and on the nose cones of many WWII aircraft, notably the Lichtenstein radar-equipped examples of the German Junkers Ju 88R-1 fighter-bomber, and the British Bristol Beaufighter night-fighter and Short Sunderland flying-boat. Indeed, the latter had so many antenna elements arranged on its back - in addition to its formidable turreted defensive armament in the nose and tail, and atop the hull - it was nicknamed the fliegende Stachelschwein, or "Flying Porcupine" by German airmen. The experimental Morgenstern German AI VHF-band radar antenna of 1943-44 used a "double-Yagi" structure from its 90° angled pairs of Yagi antennas, making it possible to fair the array within a conical, rubber-covered plywood radome on an aircraft's nose, with the extreme tips of the Morgenstern's antenna elements protruding from the radome's surface, with an NJG 4 Ju 88G-6 of the wing's staff flight using it late in the war for its Lichtenstein SN-2 AI radar.

Yagi-Uda antennas are routinely made with rather high gains (over 10dB) making them a common choice for directional antennas especially in VHF and UHF communications systems where a narrowband antenna is acceptable. Only at higher UHF and microwave frequencies are parabolic reflectors and other so-called aperture antennas of a practical size; these can easily achieve yet higher gains.

The Yagi-Uda antenna was named an IEEE Milestone in 1995.