A Non-Foster VHF Monopole Antenna

Non-Foster matching promises to improve the performance of electrically small antennas by tens of decibels over a decade of bandwidth, but only a few successful demonstrations have been reported in the literature. A 15-cm monopole antenna has been matched using a variable negative capacitance based on Linvill's balanced negative impedance converter. The realized gain is improved by >;10 dB relative to the unmatched case over 30-200 MHz. This letter reports the design, simulation, and measurement data and gives an equivalent circuit that can be used to synthesize future designs.