Development of concept of near-field technology in designing effective small-aperture microwave antennas Subject and purpose. This article is devoted to the review of the original works of the authors on studying the eff ective smallsized individual radiators of various types using near-fi eld technology. Methods and methodology. The research algorithm consists in carrying out numerical modeling of the proposed antenna designs using software packages, creating the appropriate physical prototypes and comparing the results of numerical and direct experiments of such radiator characteristics as bandwidth, radiation pattern, gain and ellipticity. At the same time, a detailed analysis of the spatial near-fi eld distributions gives the necessary information for further optimization of the antennas and obtaining their optimal characteristics. Results. The characteristics of various modifi cations of monopole, disk, aperture, microstrip and spiral antennas with record characteristics are systematized and analyzed, and the possibility of their use in a compact mobile microwave direction fi nder and nonlinear locator is also shown. The results of studying the diff raction coupling of individual aperture radiators with the involvement of developed methods of measuring the spatial near-fi eld distributions were used to create a laboratory model of an antenna array. Conclusions. A review of the results of studying the small-sized microwave antennas of various types over the past decade is given. We demonstrate the effi ciency of using information on the spatial near-fi eld distributions in the inductive and wave regions of the radiating apertures during the elaboration and subsequent optimization of the main characteristics of both individual original radiators and antenna arrays based on them. Fig. 25. Ref.: 59 items.