Collinear antenna array

(left & center) Collinear folded dipole arrays. Often used as base station antenna for dispatcher for police, fire, ambulance, and taxi services. (right) Directional antenna consisting of 4 collinear Yagi beam antennas.

In telecommunications, a collinear (or co-linear) antenna array is an array of dipole antennas mounted in such a manner that the corresponding elements of each antenna are parallel and collinear, that is they are located along a common line or axis.

Colinear arrays of dipoles are high gain omnidirectional antennas. A dipole has an omnidirectional radiation pattern when in free space and not influenced by any other conductors in that it radiates equal radio power in all azimuthal directions perpendicular to the antenna, with the signal strength dropping to zero on the antenna axis. A colinear array of dipoles has gain, radiating more of its power in azimuthal directions and less toward the axes. A colinear array is usually mounted vertically in order to increase overall gain and directivity in the horizontal direction and reduce the power radiated into the sky or down toward the earth. Theoretically, when stacking idealised lossless dipole antennas in such a fashion, doubling their number will produce double the gain, with an increase of 3.01 dB. In practice, the gain realised will be below this due to imperfect radiation spread and losses.

Colinear dipole arrays are often used as the antennas for base stations for land mobile radio systems that communicate with mobile two-way radios in vehicles, such as police, fire, ambulance, and taxi dispatchers.

Multiple directional antennas mounted vertically separated are referred to as "stacked" and if alongside each other as "bayed".

References

 This article incorporates public domain material from Federal Standard 1037C. General Services Administration. Archived from the original on 2022-01-22.

Chris Burks