Performance Analysis of Plasma Antenna with Different Shapes of Plasma Tube

Abstract

This paper investigates analysis of a novel antenna design using plasma element instead of using metallic element as a conducting medium in transmit signal of radio frequency (RF). The main objective in this paper is to analyse the performance of plasma antenna using with different shapes of plasma tube. In this research, the simulation for four different designs (single tube, double tube, triple tube, and U-tube) with fixed gas (neon) and pressure (10 Torr) were conducted. Four different design tubes with constant length (160 mm) and diameter (10 mm), attached with coupling sleeve (copper) were used to analyze the electrical characteristic of electromagnetic wave propagation. Computer Simulation Technology (CST) was used to design the four custom made tubes and calculate the antenna parameters in terms of gain, return loss, directivity and radiation pattern. Plasma parameters were calculated by the CST software with frequency was set starting from 1 to 10 GHz for simulation based on the most effective range to get the best result. The results revealed that the triple tube has the highest gain of 3.247 dB with plasma frequency 1.22x109 rad/s and collision frequency 6.0985x108 collision/s. The three arrays on the triple tube gave the ability to transmit the input power into radiation in a specific magnitude is high. Although high gain obtained from the triple tube, U-tube shape gave the lowest Return Loss, S11 value which is -15.706934 dB. The results show the ability of plasma antenna to transmit and receive a signal which is a basic part of an antenna.