A loading coil or load coil is an inductor that is inserted into an electronic circuit to increase its inductance. The term originated in the 19th century for inductors used to prevent signal distortion in long-distance telegraph transmission cables. The term is also used for inductors in radio antennas, or between the antenna and its feedline, to make an electrically short antenna resonant at its operating frequency.
Pupin coils in PTT Museum in Belgrade (Serbia)
A typical mobile antenna with a center-placed loading coil
An enormous antenna loading coil used in a powerful longwave radiotelegraph station in New Jersey in 1912
Image: Toroidal telephone loading coil
In radio and telecommunications a dipole antenna or doublet
is one of the two simplest and most widely-used types of antenna; the other is the monopole. The dipole is any one of a class of antennas producing a radiation pattern approximating that of an elementary electric dipole with a radiating structure supporting a line current so energized that the current has only one node at each far end. A dipole antenna commonly consists of two identical conductive elements
such as metal wires or rods. The driving current from the transmitter is applied, or for receiving antennas the output signal to the receiver is taken, between the two halves of the antenna. Each side of the feedline to the transmitter or receiver is connected to one of the conductors. This contrasts with a monopole antenna, which consists of a single rod or conductor with one side of the feedline connected to it, and the other side connected to some type of ground. A common example of a dipole is the "rabbit ears" television antenna found on broadcast television sets. All dipoles are electrically equivalent to two monopoles mounted end-to-end and fed with opposite phases, with the ground plane between them made "virtual" by the opposing monopole.
UHF half-wave dipole
Dipole antenna used by the radar altimeter in an airplane
Cage dipole antennas in the Ukrainian UTR-2 radio telescope. The 8 m by 1.8 m diameter galvanized steel wire dipoles have a bandwidth of 8–33 MHz.
Length reduction factor for a half-wave dipole to achieve electrical resonance (purely resistive feedpoint impedance). Calculated using the induced EMF method, an approximation that breaks down at larger conductor diameters (dashed portion of graph).