Fractal antennas

A fractal antenna is an antenna that uses a fractal, self-similar design to maximize the length, or increase the perimeter (on inside sections or the outer structure), of material that can receive or transmit electromagnetic radiation within a given total surface area or volume.

Such fractal antennas are also referred to as multilevel and space filling curves, but the key aspect lies in their repetition of a motif over two or more scale sizes, or "iterations". For this reason, fractal antennas are very compact, multiband or wideband, and have useful applications in cellular telephone and microwave communications.

A good example of a fractal antenna as a spacefilling curve is in the form of a shrunken fractal helix. Here, each line of copper is just a small fraction of a wavelength.

A fractal antenna's response differs markedly from traditional antenna designs, in that it is capable of operating with good-to-excellent performance at many different frequencies simultaneously. Normally standard antennas have to be "cut" for the frequency for which they are to be used—and thus the standard antennas only work well at that frequency.

This makes the fractal antenna an excellent design for wideband and multiband applications. In addition the fractal nature of the antenna shrinks its size, without the use of any components, such as inductors or capacitors.

The first fractal "antennas" were, in fact, fractal "arrays", with fractal arrangements of antenna elements, and not recognized initially as having self-similarity as their attribute. Log-periodic antennas are arrays, around since the 1950s (invented by Isbell and DuHamel), that are such fractal arrays. They are a common form used in TV antennas, and are arrow-head in shape.

Antenna elements (as opposed to antenna arrays) made from self-similar shapes were first created by Nathan Cohen then a professor at Boston University, starting in 1988.

Cohen's efforts with a variety of fractal antenna designs were first published in 1995 (thus the first scientific publication on fractal antennas), and a number of patents have been issued from the 1995 filing priority of invention. Most allusions to fractal antennas make reference to these "fractal element antennas".

Many fractal element antennas use the fractal structure as a virtual combination of capacitors and inductors. This makes the antenna so that it has many different resonances which can be chosen and adjusted by choosing the proper fractal design. This complexity arises because the current on the structure has a complex arrangement caused by the inductance and self capacitance. In general, although their effective electrical length is longer, the fractal element antennas are themselves physically smaller, again due to this reactive loading.

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