Beam tilt-angle estimation for monopole end-fire array mounted on a finite ground plane

A modified method for the beam tilt-angle estimation of monopole end-fire array mounted on finite ground plane is proposed. In the simplified model, the monopole array and ground plane are approximated to two line sources of transverse and longitudinal electric current, respectively. It is deduced that the beam tilt angle is a function about the length of ground plane in front of array L g, the length of monopole array L a, and the phase constant β α. After verifying the optimizing principle of monopole end-fire array, a 10-element monopole Yagi-Uda antenna satisfying Hansen-Woodyard condition is designed and measured for the analysis. By comparison and analysis, the value of β α is demonstrated to be the key point of the proposed method. And a slow wave monopole array is proved to be able to achieve a low beam tilt angle from end-fire with only a short-length ground plane.