Slot antenna impedance for plasma layers

Abstract

The rectangular cavity or waveguide backed slot is covered by a plasma layer of finite thickness. The longitudinal variation of the voltage across the slot is obtained from the variational solution of an integral equation. The solution for plasma layer of finite thickness is obtained from the free space Green's function by the method of images. The fields outside the slot depend on the surface integral of the fields over the slot plane and over the surface of the plasma layer. If the thickness of the plasma layer is large compared with the wavelength, the fields on the surface of the plasma may be related to the voltage distribution along the slot by plane wave reflection coefficients. This leads to an integral equation that is reduced to a form suitable for machine computations. These calculations show the slot admittance to remain almost constant for plasma layers of various thicknesses <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">h</tex> . The slot conductance tends to increase for <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">h/ \lambda &lt;0.5</tex> . The presence of a plasma layer affects the voltage distribution along the slot for a center excited slot. The field distribution along the waveguide excited slot differs only slightly from the principal mode field distribution in the guide.