Meader inductors in the antenna lead to small gain?

[Zener Chang]

The question is as the title mentioned. Someone said that's because of opposite direction of current on meandering inductors. Is it true?

 

[FvM]

At least the explanation sounds like erroneous believe.

Meander antennas achieve poor performance because they are electrically small and have a low radiation resistance. In a first order they can be expected to behave similar as other antennas of same size. But the design details of an inductor loaded antenna matter to some extent, a cyclindrical wound coil may be slightly better.

 

[volker@muehlhaus]

TSomeone said that's because of opposite direction of current on meandering inductors.

Opposite currents isn't ideal, but meandering the antenna to obtain some resonance is better than trying to match an electrically short antenna. I have compared two cases here:
https://muehlhaus.com/support/mwo-appnotes/matching_network_loss

Both are meandered differently, and both have about the same antenna gain. However, the antenna that is better matched by more meander turns (closer to lambda/4) has less loss in the matching network, so overall it performs better.