A directional antenna or beam antenna is an antenna which radiates greater power in one or more directions allowing for increased performance on transmit and receive and reduced interference

Interference (communication)

In communications and electronics, especially in telecommunications, interference is anything which alters, modifies, or disrupts a signal as it travels along a channel between a source and a receiver. The term typically refers to the addition of unwanted signals to a useful signal...

 from unwanted sources.
Directional antennas like Yagi-Uda antennas provide increased performance over dipole antenna

Dipole antenna

A dipole antenna is a radio antenna that can be made of a simple wire, with a center-fed driven element. It consists of two metal conductors of rod or wire, oriented parallel and collinear with each other , with a small space between them. The radio frequency voltage is applied to the antenna at...

s when a greater concentration of radiation

Radiation

In physics, radiation is a process in which energetic particles or energetic waves travel through a medium or space. There are two distinct types of radiation; ionizing and non-ionizing...

 in a certain direction is desired.

All practical antennas are at least somewhat directional, although usually only the direction in the plane parallel to the earth is considered, and practical antennas can easily be omnidirectional

Omnidirectional antenna

In radio communication, an omnidirectional antenna is an antenna which radiates radio wave power uniformly in all directions in one plane, with the radiated power decreasing with elevation angle above or below the plane, dropping to zero on the antenna's axis. This radiation pattern is often...

 in one plane.

The most common types are the Yagi-Uda antenna, the log-periodic antenna

Log-periodic antenna

In telecommunication, a log-periodic antenna is a broadband, multi-element, unidirectional, narrow-beam antenna that has impedance and radiation characteristics that are regularly repetitive as a logarithmic function of the excitation frequency...

, and the corner reflector

Corner reflector

A corner reflector is a retroreflector consisting of three mutually perpendicular, intersecting flat surfaces, which reflects waves back directly towards the source, but shifted . Unlike a simple mirror, they work for a relatively wide-angle field of view. The three intersecting surfaces often have...

, which are frequently combined and commercially sold as residential TV antennas.