Conductor Losses in Metallic Monopole Antennas: A MoM-Based Analysis from 1 kHz to 200 GHz

In metallic-only antennas (i.e., those free of dielectric materials), the conductor properties and geometric designparticularly the cross-sectional and axial configurationscritically influence the antenna's radiation efficiency and realized gain in practical applications. These factors are fundamentally tied to the frequency-dependent skin effect, which governs current distribution and conductive losses. In this work, we numerically investigate these effects using MATLAB-based method-of-moments (MoM) simulations, analyzing vertical quarter-wavelength monopole antennas with finite conductivity (copper) and non-zero cross-sectional dimensions (square-rod geometry), as opposed to idealized perfect electric conductor (PEC) approximations. Our study critically evaluates various monopole designs across a broad frequency range (1 kHz to 200 GHz), assessing their performance in terms of metallic losses.