Need Refresh myself on Antenna Design and Formulae

Question

I am about to submit a short paper on antenna design and I need to learn a lot in a short time. I am ex Royal Signals, but the last time I did any formal education in this area was forty years ago. Can anyone direct me to a source that I can find, so I can very quickly, relearn the basics? I need to cover the frequency spectrum from about 100 MHz to 10 GHz :-( 
 Thanks, Mike

mapj1 · Accepted Answer

So wire and rod antennas, yagis, arrays, then moving up-band horns patches and dishes. Some pics here of VHF type things https://hamradioprep.com/ham-radio-antennas/ 
 
 or https://www.rfcafe.com/references/radio-electronics/microwaves-antennas-radio-electronics-december-1949.htm 
 
 What level of technical underpinning do you need? - a book like Balanis https://www.amazon.co.uk/Antenna-Theory-Analysis-Constantine-Balanis/dp/047166782X will teach you the maths of the lot but you will need a month to read it, and a lifetime to appreciate it. 
 Who is the audience of this paper ? 
 Mike

mapj1 · Answer

I shall have to be very careful, and remark in passing that I currently work for one of those you might one day compete against, and I do not wish to lose that employment ;-) so I need to avoid a clash of professional interest. I can give you technical advice at the level of the sort of chat we might have had if we met in a pub. Actually for this one more likely as if we met at a radio rally but you get the idea. I can probably do an odd read and comment, but anything that looks too much like proper consultancy will have the wolves baying at my door. Its one of the reasons I do not use my real name on here - plenty of folk know it is me of course, but it is better not to tempt fate and make it too blatant. 
 You will have done your background reading on the state of the art already. Therefore you are of course already aware of the limitations of the inflatable antennas, the steppIR the screwdriver antennas and other clever tuning arrangements already ; as well as systems of non resonant antennas and electronic matching units, and also the use of duplexers and antennas one inside the other. Then there are the traveling wave conical dipoles, and related bicone discones etc, and then spiral and log periodic structures, and so if I drop them into conversation I am telling you nothing you did not already know. 
 Ahem ;-) 
 A quick refresher of the maths of the Hansen Chu limits on volume bandwidth and efficiency might be in order too to avoid claiming the impossible, winning the contract, and then failing to deliver it. 
 M.

Need Refresh myself on Antenna Design and Formulae

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