Abstract: A kind of compact short electromagnetic pulse sensor with short dipole is studied in this paper. The basic principle of the sensor and the relationship between geometry and electromagnetic parameters such as capacitance and equivalent area are introduced. A series of sensors is designed and fabricated for the measurement of short pulses with different widths. Experiments on such sensors are carried out in the ultra-wideband TEM cell produced by the mono-conical antenna. The waveform fidelity and the equivalent area are surveyed in the experiments. The numerical analysis and experimental results show that the sensor could receive and reconstruct short pulses very well and the measured value of the equivalent area coincides with the theoretical prediction. The small sensor studied in this paper is a good choice for the miniaturization of antenna measurements for ultra-wideband electromagnetic pulses.