A wideband planar dipole antenna for use in the long wavelength demonstrator array (LWDA)

It was demonstrated in this study that a planar dipole can be designed to achieve good impedance matching and wide beamwidth radiation patterns over a wide bandwidth while being simple and low cost. It was also shown that when operating this antenna directly over a lossy earth, minimally sky noise dominated operation could be achieved between 40 MHz and 84 MHz, which suggests that the antenna is suitable for use in the LWDA. To achieve greater robustness in operating the system, however, higher antenna to system noise temperature ratios may be required. Therefore, cost-effective means of installing ground screens to increase antenna efficiency will be investigated