From WIRE, AERIAL, to ANTENNA, the invention process and progress of the antenna can be described by itself. In the early days, when radio radiation was suspected, a traditional coil meter was used to try to detect or receive the radio radiation. The spark transmitter was placed under the table, and the detector; or say receiver; was placed on the table to verify that the radio radiation could penetrate the table. After preliminary verification of the positive results, they wonder what would happen if the receiving device was far away from the desktop? So a wire was used to suspend the receiving device from the ceiling at the upper end of the desktop. The result was unexpected, and the meter of the receiving device swung more. After clarifying and confirming, the WIRE of this suspended receiver on the ceiling is the prototype of today’s antenna.
Of course, the electronic industry developed rapidly, from vacuum tubes, to transistors, to integrated circuits, in just over 50 years. The vacuum tube was invented in 1904, the transistor was realized in 1947, and the modern integrated circuit (IC) was developed in 1958. During this period, the radio receiver has also developed from the most primitive mineral detector to today’s SDR (Soft Define Radio), and the 3S (Sensitivity, Selectivity, and Stability) of the receiver still used to measure the merits of a receiver or a receiving system.
As mentioned in the story at the beginning, the early artificially produced radios were in the form of spark discharge. Any metal wire can be an ideal receiving antenna. However, nowadays, the radio waves in the living environment are increasingly complex, and it is obvious that the receiver requires selectivity. In addition, radio science and engineering are becoming more and more advanced, so the requirements for the antenna used by general receivers are also increasing. The DTV antenna we will explain below will try to avoid professional terms and complex mathematical formulas. It is only with basic physics or rules of thumb to make a simple conceptual explanation, so that you can have more diverse and flexible choices when purchasing the DTV antenna needed.