Design of a Highly Miniaturized, Inherently Matched, Spherical Folded Dipole Antenna and Evaluation of its Quality Factor
<div>A highly miniaturized three-dimensional spherical folded dipole antenna has been reported, for which inherent impedance matching is achieved with respect to a practical source impedance by employing a simple series-LC loading combination, thereby engineering its input impedance. In order to maximize its bandwidth, the miniaturized antenna employs a bifilar spherical helix that maximizes use of the volume of the corresponding Chu sphere. Full-wave simulations show that the resulting antenna demonstrates excellent impedance matching and over 95% radiation efficiency even when miniaturized by 85% in comparison to a resonant dipole operating at the same frequency. Furthermore, various quality-factor definitions for the miniaturized spherical folded dipole antenna were estimated. It is observed that, owing to the use of proximate but non-overlapping resonances, two of these definitions fall below the Chu lower bound around the frequency of operation, resulting in a fractional bandwidth larger than that predicted by the Chu limit.</div>