Review of the design techniques for compact digital TV receiving antennas

This paper firstly reviews the current broadcasting systems of DTV in the world, and then emphasizes the significance that engineers need to be aware of the system-dependent characteristics in designing the receiving antennas of modern different DTV systems. Thanks to the introduction of multi-carrier digital modulation technologies, for example, OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing), new services of mobile and indoor receptions become possible. Consequently, other than the use of traditional Yagi-Uda antenna, compact feature is a must for those applications. Several antennas based on these new requirements are presented and explained. As an example, an innovative technique of applying water as the substrate in designing planar antennas for DTV reception is demonstrated in this paper, because of its high dielectric constant.