460
6, 2007
Limitations in Relating Quality Factor to Bandwidth
in a Double Resonance Small Antenna
Howard R. Stuart, Member, IEEE, Steven R. Best, Fellow, IEEE, and Arthur D. Yaghjian, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—We examine the behavior of a matched electrically
small antenna that exhibits two impedance resonances within its
defined voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) bandwidth. The exact
quality factor ( ), computed indirectly from the antenna’s input
reactance and far field, is compared to twice the inverse of the
matched half-power VSWR bandwidth ( BW ) and to an approx-
imate quality factor ( ) determined from the frequency deriva-
tive of the antenna’s input impedance. The well-established ap-
proximate equalities BW for antennas exhibiting an
isolated single impedance resonance within their operating band
are shown to become highly inaccurate for an electrically small an-
tenna exhibiting two closely spaced impedance resonances.
Index Terms—Antennas, bandwidth, Chu lower band,
resonance.
I. INTRODUCTION
T HE quality factor of an electrically small antenna is
a useful quantity to evaluate because it is usually a good
approximation to twice the inverse of the matched half-power
VSWR bandwidth of an antenna [1]–[3], and because for a given
size antenna there are simple formulas for the lower bounds on
[4]–[7] that enable the antenna designer to evaluate the per-
formance of a given antenna. While it is difficult to measure the
of an antenna directly, it has recently been shown that, for
a single sufficiently isolated resonance (or antiresonance) with
( greater than about 2 often suffices), the is accu-
rately approximated from the antenna’s input impedance by [1],
[2]
where is the angular frequency at which the antenna is tuned
to zero reactance, is the resistance of the antenna at and
is the frequency derivative of the antenna impedance at
. It was confirmed in [1] and [2] that the quantity pro-
vides a highly accurate approximation to the exact for a wide
variety of antennas. As aforementioned, however, an important
restriction on the use of (1) is that the antenna have only a single
sufficiently well defined resonance (or antiresonance) within its
Manuscript received May 8, 2007; revised July 18, 2007. The work of A.
D. Yaghjian was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research
(AFOSR).
H. R. Stuart is with LGS, Bell Labs Innovations, Whippany, NJ 07981 USA
(e-mail: hrstuart@ieee.org).
IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.
operating bandwidth [1], [2]. For antennas having multiple res-
onances, (1) must be applied judiciously.1
In this letter, we discuss the behavior of for a matched an-
tenna containing two closely-spaced resonances [8] where the
agreement between and the exact breaks down in the
vicinity of the double resonance. For certain variations in the de-
sign of this antenna, can actually go below the lower bound
(and approach zero), whereas the exact is always constrained
by fundamental physics to remain above the lower bound (only
lossless antennas are considered here) [1]–[3]. In this frequency
range, we show that the matched half-power VSWR bandwidth
-factor, of the antenna is not well-predicted by either or the exact .
As explained in Footnote 1, for this antenna can be used as an
accurate predictor of matched VSWR bandwidth only within a
very narrow frequency range around the matched frequency, that
is, only for small values of the VSWR parameter . The results
presented here illustrate the limitations in relating half-power
bandwidth to in a multiresonance antenna, as well as the dif-
ficulty in evaluating the bandwidth in the multiresonance region
of such an antenna in terms of the lower bound on .
II. MULTIRESONANCE SMALL ANTENNAS
The antenna structure considered here consists of six iden-
tical conductor arms arranged in an axially symmetric fashion
as shown in Fig. 1(a) to form a spherically shaped radiator. This
antenna is a variation of the antenna design studied experimen-
tally in [8]. The antenna is driven by a current source attached
to a single arm of the antenna as illustrated in Fig. 1(b). Al-
though the individual arms of the antenna are not directly con-
nected to one another, currents are induced in all six arms of
(1) the antenna through electromagnetic coupling. The parameters
of the antenna defined in Fig. 1 are set to the following values:
radius cm, trace width cm, gap cm, separa-
tion cm, and a 2 mm rounding radius applied to all sharp
corners. The antenna performance was simulated using the fi-
nite element method [9]. The Smith chart for the unmatched an-
tenna (normalized to 50 ohms impedance) is shown in Fig. 2(a),
where it is apparent that the antenna does not exhibit a nat-
ural impedance resonance or antiresonance in the frequency
range of interest. The antenna reactance can be tuned to zero
at 40.8 MHz using a 0.44 microHenry series inductor, and the
impedance curve of the tuned antenna is shown in Fig. 2(b).
From Fig. 2(b), we observe that the tuned antenna exhibits two
1Nonetheless, it is proven in [1] that the formula for fractional matched
VSWR bandwidth, FBW (! ) 
4( ) j
R (! )=[! Z (! ) ] with j
S. R. Best is with MITRE, Bedford, MA 01730 USA (e-mail: sbest@mitre. ( ) = (s 01)=[2(s) ], where s is the chosen value of the VSWR (for
org). example, for half-power fractional bandwidth,  = 1 and s = 5:828), is an
A. D. Yaghjian is with S4 Inc., Burlington, MA 01803 USA (e-mail: j j
accurate approximation for the fractional bandwidth provided Z does not
a.yaghjian@verizon.net). change greatly over the bandwidth, a condition that can always be satisfied if 
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2007.905018 j j
is chosen small enough and Z (! ) is not identically zero.

1536-1225/$25.00 © 2007 IEEE

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STUART et al.: DOUBLE RESONANCE SMALL ANTENNA 461

Fig. 1. (a) The antenna consists of an axially symmetric array of six conductor
arms forming a spherically shaped structure. (b) One plane of the antenna is
shown here, with the labeled parameters specifying the antenna dimensions.
The antenna is driven by attaching a current source to one of its arms.
Fig. 3. (a) The Q curves for the 60 cm gap antenna. (b) The Q curves for the
20 cm gap antenna. Due to the two closely spaced resonances in the 60 cm
gap antenna, we observe in (a) that neither the exact Q nor the parameter Q
0
quantitatively predicts the 3 dB bandwidth observed in the antenna. In the 20
cm gap antenna, the resonances are spaced farther apart. Consequently, in (b)
0
there is better agreement between the exact Q; Q , and the 3 dB bandwidth
of the antenna.

resonances, the antenna exhibits an antiresonance where the re-

actance is also 0 but the frequency derivative of reactance is neg-
ative. When we drive the antenna from a 23.5 ohm transmission
line (the impedance chosen to match the radiation resistance at
40.8 MHz), two minima are observed in the return loss curve
shown in Fig. 2(c). The two minima are closely spaced in fre-
quency (as expected from the tight impedance loop seen in the
Smith chart) and correspond to the two impedance resonances.
The normalized size of this antenna at 40.8 MHz is ,
where is the wavenumber and is the radius of the antenna.
Although the exact defined in [1] is difficult to mea-
sure experimentally, it can be determined in the simulation
using [1, eq. (80)], which requires knowledge of the antenna
reactance and far-field pattern versus frequency. The exact
versus frequency is plotted in Fig. 3(a); also shown in
this plot are the parameters [determined from (1) with
Fig. 2. The impedance behavior of the 60 cm gap antenna. (a) The Smith chart, , where
normalized to 50 ohms. (b) The antenna impedance (resistance and reactance)
versus frequency with a 0.44 microHenry series inductor used to tune the reac- and are the resistance and reactance of the
tance to zero at 40.8 MHz. (c) The return loss versus frequency for the tuned untuned antenna [1]], (the lower bound on the exact
antenna driven from a 23.5 ohm impedance line. derived from ), and (defined as twice
the inverse of the normalized dB return loss bandwidth
impedance resonances, where the reactance is 0 and the fre- of the matched antenna). The quantity , which provides an
quency derivative of reactance is positive. Between these two accurate estimate of the exact at frequencies away from the

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462
Fig. 4. The impedance behavior of the 20 cm gap antenna. (a) The Smith chart,
normalized to 50 ohms. (b) The antenna impedance (resistance and reactance)
with a 0.56 microHenry series inductor used to tune the reactance to zero at 33.4
MHz. (c) The return loss versus frequency for the tuned antenna driven from a
14.2 ohm impedance line.
double resonance (as expected), deviates appreciably from the
exact near the double resonance. In this frequency range,
falls below the fundamental lower bound, coming close to
zero. This result does not indicate, however, that the antenna
performance beats the lower bound. On the contrary, the exact
remains above the lower bound over the whole frequency
range as expected. It is notable that neither nor the exact
predicts well the dB matched VSWR bandwidth of the
antenna in the vicinity of the double resonance. As explained
in Footnote 1, the quantity does accurately predict the
bandwidth of the antenna within a very narrow frequency range
around the matched frequency. For example, when matched at
40.8 MHz, accurately predicts the matched bandwidth for
return loss values below dB, that is, when the matched
resonance is isolated from its neighbor.
In contrast with the first example, we present results for a
similar antenna, with the gap size reduced to 20 cm. (All other
parameters are kept identical.) The results for this antenna [see
Figs. 3(b) and 4] show that reducing the gap size lowers the
resonant frequency of the antenna (due to the increase in ca-
pacitance), and also moves the two resonances of the antenna
further apart. The impedance loop widens such that the two res-
onant frequencies are separated by slightly more than 4 MHz
when the antenna is matched at 33.4 MHz (using a 0.56 micro-
Henry series inductor and a 14.2 ohm impedance transmission
line). In this case, the two resonant frequencies are sufficiently
separated that the quantity shows good agreement with the
exact over the entire range of frequencies studied. The quan-
tity is defined with respect to the dB return loss band-
width, and deviates appreciably from the exact at frequencies
where the return loss maximum between the two resonances re-
mains below dB.
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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 6, 2007
III. DISCUSSION
In a recent paper, Gustafsson et al. [10] observe that an arbi-
trarily small can be obtained by placing a suitable lumped el-
ement matching network in front of a single resonance antenna.
For the antenna illustrated here, we have not introduced such a
network; it is rather the antenna itself that exhibits an impedance
response characteristic of a higher order lumped element net-
work. Nevertheless, the result is equivalent to that predicted in
[10]: the of the antenna can be made very small at a particular
frequency, whereas the exact actually increases when the
is made smaller. (The absolute difference in the minimum exact
for the two cases observed here is small due to the larger ka
of the antenna in Fig. 3(a); when the exact is compared to the
lower bound, the difference is more substantial.) The increase
in the exact arises from the additional stored energy present
in the antenna with the higher order response.
The discrepancy between the half-power bandwidth, the
exact , and the parameter raises questions regarding the
utility of the quantities and in assessing the performance
of a multiresonance antenna. The exact is indeed not very
helpful in predicting half-power bandwidth performance in a
multiresonant antenna. For the antenna in Fig. 2, the matched
VSWR bandwidth benefits from the presence of the two
adjacent impedance resonances: the bandwidth is widened
compared to that of a single resonance structure. However, the
conditions that cause this widening also cause the exact to
increase, the opposite of what is expected when comparing
and bandwidth. In contrast, though the quantity does not
quantitatively predict the half-power bandwidth of the antenna
in Fig. 2, we observe the proper correlation between and
bandwidth: as we reduce , the bandwidth of the antenna
improves. The quantity therefore remains a useful design
tool in this circumstance. And, as explained in Footnote 1, as
long as can always be used to predict the
matched VSWR fractional bandwidth over a narrow enough
frequency band that the resonant peak is well defined, that is,
for small enough.
Finally, it is often desirable when designing a small antenna
to compare its performance to the fundamental lower bound.
Because the lower bound is defined in terms of the exact ,
this comparison is problematic when an inherently multireso-
nance structure is being studied. For this reason, it is not always
possible to directly compare an antenna’s performance to funda-
mental limits from its impedance behavior. A direct comparison
can be made if we analyze the individual modes of oscillation
of the short-circuited antenna structure. For the antenna studied
here, there are several natural modes of oscillation present in
this structure, only one of which is the low- electric dipole
mode (the mode in which the currents of the six arms oscillate in
phase). Although the low- mode is the dominant mode excited
over the frequency range we study here, the other modes of the
structure (which resonate at higher frequencies and have higher
values of ), are excited to a small degree when driving the
antenna, and they contribute to its multiresonance impedance
behavior. It is possible to directly compare the of the funda-
mental resonant mode of the short-circuited antenna to the lower
bound on using numerical eigenmode simulations. For the 60
STUART et al.: DOUBLE RESONANCE SMALL ANTENNA
cm gap antenna (Fig. 2), we find the fundamental mode at 42.1
MHz with a of 8.2 (1.65 times the lower bound), and for the
20 cm gap antenna (Fig. 4) we find the fundamental mode at
36.4 MHz with a of 15.4 (2.17 times the lower bound). For
the case of the antenna with the two closely spaced impedance
resonances (Fig. 2), this does not quantitatively predict the
matched VSWR bandwidth observed in the antenna. However, it
is a more relevant parameter than either the exact or when
comparing the properties of this antenna to the lower bound
on .
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