What Is Dipole Antenna?

It's how you know you're in the right place. When looking at a dipole antenna, it's easy to tell that you're in the right place. You might not know what a dipole antenna is, but you can tell by its shape: it looks like a pair of wires split in half and hanging apart from each other. The insulator keeps them separated so they don't touch each other when they're not supposed to. It is one of the simplest radio antennas—just two wires split apart by an insulator! Radio waves are transmitted through a coaxial cable to create a positive and negative charge on the line; no current flows when the positive and negative payments are equal. As a radio wave travels through a coaxial cable, the electrical properties of the cable change at a rate proportional to the length of the thread, creating an exponential increase in the positive and negative charge at each end of the line. At the split in the dipole antenna, the positive and negative payments are equal. No current flows when the positive control at one end is the same as the negative charge at the other. The length of a dipole antenna is critical in determining its frequency of operation. The electrical properties of the cable change at a rate proportional to the length of the cable. When the antenna size exceeds the desired wavelength of the desired radio wave, it can no longer create a positive and negative charge on its cable. Dipole antennas are the most common type of antenna. They are often used as the driven element in other antennas, such as the dipole antenna that forms part of a Yagi-Uda antenna. Radiation is produced by applying radio frequency voltages to the dipole antenna at its center, between its two conductors. The length of each conductor is one-quarter of a wavelength long.