Effect of reduction in ground plane thickness in monopole antenna

Hi everyone,

I'm working on a project to build a monopole antenna. To do this what should be the minimum thickness of the ground plane, so that the antenna radiation is not affected significantly?

Thanks and Regards,
way2nitinp

Because of the skin effect, the thickness limit will be set by the manufacturing process. Since you are not making precise line widths, one oz copper will work.

But, how many times the skin depth is this minimum thickness?

---------- Post added at 23:18 ---------- Previous post was at 21:30 ----------

For the monopole, the ground plane will be placed on a particle detector, which detects the energy of the incident particle. Hence the thickness of the aluminum sheet should be minimum in order to ensure minimum energy reduction. If the operating frequency of the monopole is 145MHz, what will be the minimum thickness of the ground plane?

---------- Post added at 23:19 ---------- Previous post was at 23:18 ----------

For the monopole, the ground plane will be placed on a particle detector, which detects the energy of the incident particle. Hence the thickness of the aluminum sheet should be minimum in order to ensure minimum energy reduction. If the operating frequency of the monopole is 145MHz, what will be the minimum thickness of the ground plane?

Did you ever hand calculate the expectable skin depth at 145 MHz? You'll notice that any available copper weight will provide a copper thickness that is a multiple of skin depth. That means, it can be effectively ignored.

An interesting parameter is however surface roughness. It can increase the effective resistance by a factor of 2 and more.