Mounting on Roof or at Ground Level?
Groundplane Antennas at Various Heights
Introduction:
Some years ago a friend told me the following story:
"You know my triband groundplane antenna on top of the roof of my house, about
12m above ground level. On vacation I mounted it on top of my camper at
about 5m height at different locations. It worked at outstanding performance!
I made a lot of new countries I never heard before from home site! Back home I
compared the roof mounted groundplane antenna with an identical model on top
of my camper. The same story! The lower mounted antenna worked better!"
Analysis:
After some hours of discussion (and some beers...) I decided to pick
out an old PASCAL code which shows a graphical 3D-representation of
MININECs output files.
Simulations of full size groundplanes with four radials and vertical
dipoles at usual heights from almost zero to 1.5 wavelength confirmed my
hypothesis that a distorted radiation pattern could be the reason for
that phenomenon. "Height" means the distance of the radial system to
ground level.
Figure 1 shows the simple geometry of the simulation of a full size
groundplane antenna at 0.5 wavelength height. The feed-point is at the
joint connection between radiator and radial system. Radiator and
radials are of 5.5m lengths (ca. 0.25 wavelengths on 14 MHz).
The conductivity of soil did not alter the results. I chose 5 mS/m for
conductivity and 13 for dielectric constant. This corresponds to an average
type of earth soil.
As usual the magnitudes of field strength are plotted in Decibels over isotropic
radiator. For clearness I avoided any grid values. All patterns are shown from
maximum gain to 20 dB down.
Figure 1
Example of input file for MININEC (K6STI, 1988, v. 1.0):
Groundplane Antenna, Height: 0.5 lambda
real ground
14.1 MHz
5 wires, meters
5, 0, 0, 10.0, 0, 0, 15.5, 0.01
5, 0, 0, 10.0, 5.5, 0, 10.0, 0.01
5, 0, 0, 10.0, 0, 5.5, 10.0, 0.01
5, 0, 0, 10.0, -5.5, 0, 10.0, 0.01
5, 0, 0, 10.0, 0, -5.5, 10.0, 0.01
1 source
1, 100, 0
0 loads
Results:
Figure 2 shows a typical radiation pattern of a groundplane antenna as could be found in antenna handbooks. The radials are ground mounted. "Ground mounted" means that they are only 0.02 wavelength above earth level. The radiation pattern looks like a 360� "collar" with a deep null just overhead.
Conclusion:
Do not mount groundplane antennas at heights between 0.25 and 1.25 wavelength.
At those levels above ground most of the energy will be radiated at angles of
27� to 45� into the ionosphere. This phenomenon seems to be independent to the
number of radials or other counterpoises. Further simulations indicates that
this is true for all other variants of vertical antenna systems too.
DF3LP, June 1998