Understanding voltage induction in a short dipole antenna

The approximate treatment of a short dipole as receiving antenna using electrostatic considerations is presented. By simple approximations, it can be found that the effective height, connecting the open circuit voltage with the incident electric field, is approximately half the dipole’s length. This result is commonly obtained using the reciprocity theorem which requires the knowledge of the current distribution in the transmission case and which is not physically intuitive to undergraduate students. We illustrate our considerations by means of numerical results and a simple numerical method, which can be readily implemented by undergraduate students.