Handheld UHF Quad Antennas With Reinforced Mechanical Characteristics

Due to the specificity of the application, directional hand-held antennas for outdoor use are subject to mechanical damage. Therefore, when choosing directional hand-held antennas for outdoor use, in addition to considering electrical and electromagnetic characteristics of antennas, special attention should also be paid to the mechanical characteristics of antennas. Quad antennas, although they have excellent electrical and electromagnetic characteristics due to the complexity of their construction, and unsatisfactory mechanical characteristics have not found application as hand-held antennas for outdoor use. This paper presents a new idea in the design and construction of a quad antenna that has reinforced mechanical characteristics. This paper presents the design of compact handheld quad antennas suitable for outdoor mobile applications. The antennas were tested in practice, they were subjected to various mechanical stresses. Impressive mechanical strength and compactness of the antenna have been achieved. The numerical electromagnetics code software 4nec2 is used to design, analyze and optimize the presented antennas. The presented antennas operate at a frequency of 446 MHz. The voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) of all presented antennas was measured by a vector analyzer and is better than 1.5. There was a small deviation between simulated and measured results. Possible reasons for this discrepancy are listed and commented on.