Antenna beamwidth? - RF Cafe Forums

RF Cafe Forums closed its virtual doors in 2010 mainly due to other social media platforms dominating public commenting venues. RF Cafe Forums began sometime around August of 2003 and was quite well-attended for many years. By 2010, Facebook and Twitter were overwhelmingly dominating online personal interaction, and RF Cafe Forums activity dropped off precipitously. Regardless, there are still lots of great posts in the archive that ware worth looking at. Below are the old forum threads, including responses to the original posts.

-- Amateur Radio

-- Anecdotes, Gripes, & Humor

-- Antennas

-- CAE, CAD, & Software

-- Circuits & Components

-- Employment & Interviews

-- Miscellany

-- Swap Shop

-- Systems

-- Test & Measurement

-- Webmaster

Qacer

Post subject: Antenna beamwidth?

Posted: Sat Feb 10, 2007 3:30 pm

Captain

Joined: Sat Apr 23, 2005 2:09 pm

Posts: 17

Location: Tampa, FL

If I am given an antenna pattern plot that looks like this:

How would I estimate its beamwidth?

I was thinking that I find the point where the antenna shows the maximum gain and trace through the plot from one side finding the 3-db point and trace the opposite side finding another 3-db point. Is this correct?

nubbage

Post subject:

Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 5:00 am

General

Joined: Fri Feb 17, 2006 12:07 pm

Posts: 218

Location: London UK

Yes, that is correct.

Some people quote the full side-to-side beamwidth as you describe, while others state the angle as +- x degrees, ie each side of the max gain direction.

Posted 11/12/2012


Please Support RF Cafe by purchasing my ridiculously low−priced products, all of which I created. RF Cascade Workbook for Excel RF & Electronics Symbols for Visio RF & Electronics Symbols for Office RF & Electronics Stencils for Visio RF Workbench (shareware) T-Shirts, Mugs, Cups, Ball Caps, Mouse Pads These Are Available for Free Calculator Workbook Smith Chart™ for Excel

About RF Cafe Copyright: 1996 - 2024 Webmaster: Kirt Blattenberger, BSEE - KB3UON RF Cafe began life in 1996 as "RF Tools" in an AOL screen name web space totaling 2 MB. Its primary purpose was to provide me with ready access to commonly needed formulas and reference material while performing my work as an RF system and circuit design engineer. The World Wide Web (Internet) was largely an unknown entity at the time and bandwidth was a scarce commodity. Dial-up modems blazed along at 14.4 kbps while tying up your telephone line, and a nice lady's voice announced "You've Got Mail" when a new message arrived... All trademarks, copyrights, patents, and other rights of ownership to images and text used on the RF Cafe website are hereby acknowledged. My Hobby Website: AirplanesAndRockets.com