Talk:Aperture efficiency

Some very dubious material removed, a reference added.
I've added the IEEE standard definition for radiation efficiency of an antenna. I've removed the statement "Antenna efficiency can also be expressed as the ratio between its input power and its radiated power:" since that is clearly wrong. Radiation efficiency is unrelated to the power applied to the input of an antenna, but only to the power accepted by the antenna. If the SWR is high, the antenna will only accept a small fraction of the input power, but that does not change the radiation efficiency.

I really don't see the point of this equation


 * $${R_{total}} = {R_{radiation}} + {R_{coil}} + {R_{ground}} + {R_{other}}$$

All the stuff about the Q of coils is irrelevant.

It's also doubtful if one should consider "ground loss". The power which is radiated into the ground is still radiated - just usually not in a very useful way. But consider what happens if you want to communicate with someone in a cave from the ground - in that case power radiated towards the sky is wasted, and that radiated into the ground is useful. There's a whole group of people doing this - see for example http://bcra.org.uk/creg/

This seems to be based on a lot of stuff written in the amateur radio press or web sites, which are often of dubious accuracy.


 * Agreed; the Components of radiation efficiency section is largely irrelevant. Also the page is supposed to be about antenna efficiency not radiation efficiency.
 * $$\eta_\mathrm{radiation} = \frac{P_\mathrm{radiated}}{P_\mathrm{accepted}}$$
 * $$\eta_\mathrm{antenna} = \frac{P_\mathrm{radiated}}{P_\mathrm{available}}$$
 * where $$P_\mathrm{accepted} \le P_\mathrm{available}$$ as the antenna input impedance deviates from its nominal value (assumed equal to the source impedance) - i.e. due to the mismatch loss. --catslash (talk) 23:03, 22 April 2012 (UTC). The bit about other parameters which include the word efficiency also seems of little relevance, and capacitive losses is an oxymoron. --catslash (talk) 23:18, 22 April 2012 (UTC)


 * This is very wrong! The common usage of this page's name is aperture efficiency, and should be changed. The IEEE definition doesn't reflect common usage including by IEEE members. I'm sure >95% of the people who search and reach this page had radiative efficiency in mind.Interferometrist (talk) 23:04, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Merge into Antenna aperture?
I think this article should be merged into Antenna aperture. Aperture efficiency is defined in terms of aperture and used in conjunction with that term; this entire article just duplicates explanation already in Antenna aperture. Plus I question whether there is enough content in this topic to justify a separate article; it will probably always be a stub. There is plenty of room in Antenna aperture for it. --ChetvornoTALK 00:02, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Done. --ChetvornoTALK 05:16, 9 November 2018 (UTC)