VHF suspended plate transmitter antenna design for DVB-T and DAB-T

This paper presents the design of stacked suspended plate transmitter antenna for digital video and audio broadcasting. Contrary to conventional dipole structures, we have designed the antenna in VHF band (174-254 MHz) with two plates for wideband matching and design flexibility. Radiating primary plate has been excited by novel wideband modified inverted L-type probe. Parasitic secondary plate, and vertical wall between primary plate, and ground plane have been used for further matching and beamwidth adjustment. A bandwidth of 42% and gain of 8.5 dBi is obtained at center frequency. Together with equivalent lumped element circuit model of designed antenna and experimental results for S11, gain, and radiation pattern are presented. To the best of authors knowledge this is the first stacked suspended plate antenna achieving a record bandwidth of 42% in VHF band.