Abstract
Apart from interfering in the communication system of an aircraft, electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) radiated from spark discharge plasma, which is generated during high-speed flight, can also be utilized in passive detection. In order to validate this idea, an experiment on direction of arrival (DOA) estimation of a spark discharge plasma target using its radiated EMPs is carried out in this paper. A combined time-domain antenna is designed based on the model of spark discharge process and is used to receive the radiated EMPs during the experiment. According to the experimental results, the DOA estimation system with combined antenna is able to obtain the direction information of a spark discharge plasma. Results also show that the estimation performance of elevation angle is better when the actual elevation angle of the discharge plasma target is higher, while the estimation performance of azimuth is opposite. The azimuth angle of a target has very little influence on the DOA estimation. Moreover, the estimation error can be reduced effectively by increasing the aperture size of receiving array. The previously mentioned results provide an approach to locate the discharge plasma source using radiated EMPs with passive detection techniques.
Highlights
Discharge plasma can be generated on the surface of an aircraft during high-speed flight due to the collision between the air and aircraft itself [1] and brings about unexpected interferences, such as communication blackout and electronic equipment damaging [2,3,4]
Corresponding research of spark discharge has been accomplished. e results show that the electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) radiated from a spark discharge plasma are ultra-wideband signals with a frequency band of 0∼200 MHz, and the energy in 100∼200 MHz mainly comes from the transient discharge process, while the energy in 0∼100 MHz comes from the subsequent energy releasing process
Fast Fourier transform (FFT) was applied on the received signal, and the amplitude-frequency curve is illustrated in Figure 7(b). e energy of received signal mainly concentrates on the frequency band of 0∼200 MHz, which agrees well with the radiation band of EMPs from the discharge source. e above results confirm the performance of combined time-domain antenna receiving radiated EMPs from spark discharge plasma
Summary
Discharge plasma can be generated on the surface of an aircraft during high-speed flight due to the collision between the air and aircraft itself [1] and brings about unexpected interferences, such as communication blackout and electronic equipment damaging [2,3,4]. The discharge process and discharge plasma can be utilized: When discharge process occurs on the surface of an aircraft, electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) are generated and radiated to free space. With properly designed receiving element, the direction of arrival (DOA) of the aircraft can be estimated by a passive detection system using the radiated EMPs theoretically. The radiation characteristics of the EMPs from spark discharge plasma in time domain as well as frequency domain has been investigated, and a combined dipole-loop antenna model was proposed as an equivalent model of the entire spark discharge process [5]. DOA estimation is carried out to validate the idea of utilizing the radiated EMPs in passive detection. A combined time-domain antenna, which is designed based on the discharge model, was applied as receiving element
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