[Physics] How does a receiving antenna work

antennaselectromagnetic-radiationelectromagnetism

I thought something like this would be easy to find on the web, but apparently I was wrong. Or maybe I'm using the wrong search terms.
I'm imagining some kind of resonance which amplifies only a specific frequency and lets the rest cancel themselves out, and then outputs an electric current that oscillates in that frequency – for example 2.4 billion times a second for a Bluetooth antenna. But I can't find the (presumably simple) mechanism for that.

So, in layman's terms – what is the simple mechanism for a receiving antenna?

Best Answer

The electromagnetic field radiated by the transmitter (and every other transmitter and noise source) causes current to flow in the antenna. This is filtered and amplified by the radio. The radio needs to weed out the signal it's looking for from all the rest of the junk coming in on the antenna.

Normal antennas aren't as selective as you are expecting. A resonant antenna can be somewhat selective, but it requires special construction. A ham antenna called a magnetic loop is about the most selective real antenna I know of. They are employed at tens of megahertz.

The degree of selectivity is referred to as $Q$.