Bicone antennas have similar properties to tuned half-wave dipoles (omnidirectional characteristic in the H-plane, "8" characteristic in the E-plane, fixed phase center, comparable gain), whereby the characteristic shape of the double-cone elements means that a fairly large bandwidth is achieved.
The bicone elements can be assembled or disassembled within a few seconds, they are held by collets with union nuts.
For many applications that normally use half-wave dipoles, significant time savings can be achieved by using bicone antennas. The time-consuming adjustment of the element length to half the wavelength can be omitted, an important prerequisite for broadband sweep measurements. When using tuned dipoles, measurements are normally carried out at discrete frequencies, but the bicone antenna allows continuous frequency sweeping, with which any measurement site anomalies that may be present are detected much more reliably.
Typical applications for bicone antennas are therefore:
- Broadband receiving antenna for emission measurements (20-300 MHz)
- Transmitting antenna for immunity tests at low frequencies
- shielding effectiveness measurements
- Determination of the measuring station properties (e.g. absorber room or free field measuring station)
- Passive field probe in immunity tests
- Determination of the field strength profile (homogeneous zone)