This article gives a list of brief summaries of multiple different types of antennas used for radio receiving or transmitting systems. Antennas are typically grouped into categories based on their electrical operation; the classifications and sub-classifications below follow those used in most antenna engineering textbooks.

This section is an overview that lists the following sections and subsections in this article, in the order that those sections occur. Each group of antennas fit together based on some commonly used electrical operating principle: There is at least one aspect for which each group of antennas all work in the same way. The list below summarizes the parts of this article; the bold-face links in this subsection lead to the other named sections and subsections of the article each of which gives a summary description. In turn, the links within those summaries lead to relevant Wikipedia articles on antennas.

The listed antennas are clustered based on some shared principle(s) of electrical operation, so that antenna designs that use similar functional principles are listed close together. The order used is neither objective nor universal, but does conform to the organization used by many authors. Antennas can be classified in various ways, and various writers organize the different aspects of antennas with different priorities, depending on whether their text is most focused on specific frequency bands; or antenna size, construction, and placement feasibility; or explicating principles of radio theory and engineering that underlie, guide, and constrain antenna design. Different types of antennas are made with properties especially optimized for particular uses, and the electrical design of antennas serves as a way to group them:

The category of simple antennas consists of dipoles, monopoles, and loop antennas. Nearly all can be made with a single segment of wire (ignoring any break made in the wire for the feedline connection).^{[citation needed]}

Dipoles and monopoles are called linear antennas (or straight wire antennas) since their radiating parts lie along a single straight line, ignoring convenience bending of the far ends, if any. On rare occasions they are called electric antennas since they engage with the electric part of RF radiation, in contrast to loops, which correspondingly are magnetic.

The dipole consists of two conductors, usually metal rods or wires, usually arranged symmetrically, end-to-end, with one side of the balanced feedline from the transmitter or receiver attached to each, and usually elevated as high as feasible above the ground. Some varieties of dipoles differ only in having off-center feedpoints or feedpoints at their ends, others vary the alignment or shape of the dipole arms. Although dipoles are used alone as omnidirectional antennas, they are also a building block of many other more complicated directional antennas. All types of dipoles can be mounted either vertically or horizontally, and the chosen orientation determines their receive / transmit directions and wave polarity.

Designs of linear antennas can be modified by using segments made of a bundled "cage" of wires instead of just a single wire, in order to simulate a single very "fat" wire. Another adaption is to bend otherwise straight segments near their ends, instead of only using completely straight wire, and exploiting the bent, folded, and zig-zagged dipole ends to fit in a tight space. Both of these adaptions to linear antenna designs are considered relevant, but minor distinctions between antennas.

A monopole antenna is a half-dipole (see above); it consists of a single conductor such as a metal rod, usually mounted over electrically conductive ground, or an artificial conducting surface (called a ground plane, ground system, or a counterpoise). They are sometimes classed together with dipoles (see above) in the broader category of linear antennas, or more plainly straight wire antennas,^{[citation needed]} since their radiating section is normally a straight (linear) wire or section of metal tubing. Rarely, both dipoles and monopoles are called electric antennas,^{[citation needed]} since they interact with the electric field of a radio wave, to contrast them against all sizes of loops, which are correspondingly magnetic antennas.