1st IEEE International Symposium on Telecommunication Technologies

Analysis and Design between Plasma Antenna and

Monopole Antenna
H. Ja’afar1*, M.T. Ali2 N.A Halili3, Hanisah.Mohd Zali4, A. N Dagang5
1,2,3,4
Microwave Technology Centre (MTC)
Faculty of Electrical Engineering,
Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), 40450 Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia.
1
hajar_3112@yahoo.com, 2mizi732002@yahoo.com, 3nurainahalili@gmail.com, 4hanisahzali@yahoo.com.my
5
Faculty of Science and Technology,
Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (UMT), Kuala Terengganu, Terengganu, Malaysia.
5
nazri.dagang@umt.edu.my

Abstract— This paper design on plasma monopole antenna and
to prove that a plasma column has been characterized as an
antenna. The dimension of the antenna in this project is length of
the plasma column l= 150mm, the radius of plasma column r =
5.2mm and the ground for this antenna using an aluminum. The
radius for circular aluminum is 40mm. The frequency target
range 550MHz until 600MHz. This frequency can be applied in
ultra high frequency (UHF).In this project, the simulation is
performed by using the simulation software Computer
Simulation Technology (CST) Microwave Studio which is a
commercially available electromagnetic simulator based on finite
difference time domain technique. The performance of the
designed antenna was analyzed in term of bandwidth, gain,
return loss, voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR), and radiation
pattern.
Keywords—Plasma monopole antenna, return loss, gain,
radiation pattern.
I. INTRODUCTION
Plasma antenna is a general term which represents the use
of ionized gas as a conducting medium instead of a metal to
either transmit or reflect a signal to achieve radar, or stealth,
or communication purpose. Plasma is rapidly created and
destroyed by applying bursts of RF power to the discharge
tubes so the antenna can be rapidly switched on and off. When
it is off, plasma is non-conducting and invisible to
electromagnetic radiations. When it is on, plasma is an
electrical conductor and therefore, can provide the conducting
medium for the radio signal to transmit and can also allow the
incident microwave pulse to simply pass through it without
interaction or reflection if the plasma frequency in the antenna
is sufficiently low.
The main advantage in using plasma antennas instead of
metallic elements is that they allow an electrical rather than
mechanical control. In particular, for military applications the
possibilities to have conducting elements only when the useful
signal needs to be transmitted make difficult the antenna
detection by hostile radars. Moreover, an antenna array can be
rapidly reconfigured, to change the radiation pattern, without
suffering perturbation from the unused element. Besides that,
plasma antennas have more degrees of freedom than metal
antennas, making their applications have enormous
possibilities.
Plasma can be generated by UV laser irradiation, or by
laser initiated pre-ionization followed by high voltage
breakdown to form the main conducting channel [1], or by
simply using commercial fluorescence tube to serve as
reflector [2,3], or by much more expensive electron beam
generated plasma [4,5]. The pressure at which plasmas
operates can be vacuum pressure, moderate pressure or
atmospheric pressure. Plasma can be nonthermal or “cold”
plasma in which case the electron temperature is much greater
than the ion temperature and the ion temperature is equal to
the gas temperature.
In this paper, a plasma monopole antenna with different
radius and length are design and simulated using Computer
Simulation Tools (CST). The performance of the designed
antenna was analyzed in term of bandwidth, gain, return loss,
VSWR and radiation pattern. Besides that, this paper also
shows the comparison results between plasma monopole
antenna and monopole antenna.
II. PRINCIPLE OF PLASMA ANTENNA
Plasma is a collection of ionized positive ions and free
moving electrons; usually the ionization degree is very low,
less than 1 %. Plasma can be generated by electron impact
ionization, photo-ionization, or simply heating the gas, the
first method being the most energy efficient one. Once plasma
is formed, a sheath is set up automatically between the
electrode and plasma to maintain the energy and particle
balance. Region outside the sheath is called the positive
column, where uniform plasma exists, whose density and

*Corresponding Author

978-1-4673-4786-0/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE 47

dimension is determined by the balance between ion diffusion Ȟc = ngK(Te) (2)
to the surrounding wall and the ion generation mechanism. [6]
The dielectric constant of the drude dispersion model is
Plasma antenna characteristics are much better described by given in Eq. 3.
the fluid model. Macroscopic variables of the plasma are
given in the fluid model. These macroscopic variables include
density, particle flux, velocity, current density, heat flux and ‫ܭ = ܭ‬0 [‫ ’ܭ‬- Ȧp2 ]
the pressure tensor. The two-fluid model of plasma physics Ȧ (Ȧ –jv) (3)
describes the electrons and ions as conducting fluids that are
couples thorough momentum transfer collisions and
Maxwell’s equations. The set of equations involved include Where is the relative dielectric constant at infinite
continuity, momentum and Maxwell’s equations. In the two- frequency, generally ‫ = ’ܭ‬1. Table I shows the calculated
fluid equations ions and electrons are identified as separate parameter that used for design plasma monopole antenna.
species.
TABLE I. CALCULATED PARAMETERS
III. PLASMA MONOPOLE ANTENNA
Epsilon Infinity, ’ 1
A monopole antenna is a class of radio antenna consisting
Plasma frequency, Ȧp 5.634e11 rad/s
of a straight rod-shaped conductor, often mounted
perpendicularly over some type of conductive surface, called a Collision frequency, Ȟc 10e9 1/s
ground plane. Monopole antennas are also the antennas of
choice for very low frequency (VLF) (3 to 30kHz) and low Fig.1 shows the geometry of the plasma monopole antenna
frequency (LF) (30 to 300 kHz) communication systems. for side view and the top view and Fig. 2 shows the monopole
antenna for side view and the top view.
Transmission mode of electromagnetic wave in plasma
column is similar to transmission mode in metal. So the r
plasma is able to conduct electromagnetic wave instead of Plasma
metal in antenna design. The basic type of antenna with
plasma radiator is a plasma monopole antenna [8]. As the
plasma is a kind of dispersion material, the impedance l
characteristics and radiation characteristics of the plasma
monopole antenna are different with the metal monopole
t
antenna.
Coaxial feed Plasma
Ground
IV. DRUDE MODEL Glass
To simulate the performance of plasma monopole antenna,
CST software based on finite integral technique is used. In this (a) Side view (b) Top view
software, the behavior of the plasma is given by drude
dispersion model. Drude dispersion model describes the
Figure 1. Plasma antenna monopole
transport properties of electrons in materials (especially
metals). This model, which is an application of kinetic theory,
assumes that the microscopic behavior of electrons in a solid
r
may be treated classically and looks much like a pinball
machine, with a sea of constantly jittering electrons bouncing Copper
and re-bouncing off heavier, relatively immobile positive ions. (Metal)
For 7KH SODVPD IUHTXHQF\ Ȧp DQG WKH FROOLVLRQ IUHTXHQF\ Ȟc Coaxial feed
are the so-called Drude Parameters. One must distinguish the l
difference between the plasma frequency and the operating
frequency of the plasma antenna. The plasma frequency is a Ground
measure of the amount of ionization in the plasma and the
operating frequency of the plasma antenna is the same as the Metal
operating frequency of a metal antenna. Eq. 1 shows the
plasma frequency equation and Eq. 2 shows the collision
frequency equation. (a) Side view (b) Top view

Ȧp = ¥e2ne) /( ‫ܭ‬0me) (1) Figure 2. Monopole antenna

48
 The structure incorporates plasma, glass, aluminum as a while the plasma antenna is 1.32 (green line) at resonant
ground and a vertical probe connected to the plasma. The frequency = 573.5MHz. A perfectly matched antenna would
length of the plasma column is l = 150 mm and the radius of have a VSWR of 1:1.This indicates how much power is
plasma column r = 5.2mm. The radius of circular aluminum is reflected back or transferred into a cable.
40mm. The tube wall (glass) has a thickness, t = 0.1mm.
The electron density in the plasma column is considered
homogeneous and the collision frequency is constant. The
probe feed (coaxial feed) is a technique that used in this
project for feeding microstrip patch antennas and fed by a
SMA connector. SMA connector design is according to
specification in [9] using Teflon with dielectric constant =
2.08. The impedance of feeding coaxial transmission line is 50
Ÿ

V. RESULT AND DISCUSSION Figure 5. Radiation Pattern in 3D for metal antenna monopole
Fig. 3 shows the return loss S1, 1 dB against frequency
(MHz) between plasma monopole antenna and metal
monopole antenna. The red line represent for plasma
monopole antenna while green line represent for metal
monopole antenna. It seen that the return loss of plasma
monopole antenna from simulation is -17.13321dB at resonant
frequency 573.5MHz while for metal monopole antenna the
return loss is -32.290199dB at resonant frequency 600MHz.
S 1, 1 (dB)

Figure 6. Radiation Pattern in 3D for plasma antenna monopole

Fig. 5 shows the radiation pattern in 3D for metal antenna

monopole while Fig. 6 shows the radiation pattern in 3D for
metal antenna monopole. The gain obtained for plasma
antenna monopole is 1.341dB and for metal antenna monopole
Figure 3. Return loss of plasma and metal monopole antenna is 2.104dB. Table II shows the gain and return loss obtained
between plasma and metal antenna monopole. From the table
From Fig. 3, it is seen that the bandwidth for plasma the gain for plasma antenna is low compared to metal antenna.
antenna monopole is 16.4% compared to metal antenna
monopole is 15.76%. By using plasma monopole antenna Table II. Comparison between Plasma and Metal Antenna
produce
p wider bandwidth compared to monopole antenna. Plasma Antenna Metal Antenna
Return loss, s11 (dB) -17.13321 -32.290199
VSWR (volt) Gain (dB) 1.341 2.104
Directivity (dBi) 2.156 2.118

A. Effects due to length of plasma column.

Based on the dimension in Fig. 1, the length of the plasma

column is changed from 150mm to 160 mm with step of 2
Frequency mm. As shown in Fig 7, it is seen that the resonant frequency
(MHz) shifted to the left when increase the length of plasma column.
Figure 4. VSWR graph Table III shows the return loss for variation of the length of
plasma column.
Fig. 4 shows the voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR)
against frequency (MHz) between plasma and metal antenna
monopole results. From simulation the value is 1.05 for the
metal antenna (red line) at resonant frequency = 600MHz

49
 S 1, 1 (dB)

Figure 10. Polar plot of radiation pattern at theta = 0 for plasma antenna.
Figure 7. Changes in length of plasma column.

Table III. Various Lengths for Plasma column. Fig. 9 shows the polar plot of radiation pattern for plasma
antenna monopole at phi =900 while Fig. 10 shows the
Length (mm) Return loss, s11 (dB) radiation pattern at theta = 00. The radiation pattern is very
150 -17.133210 close to the pattern of an ideal dipole.
152 -16.578967 VI. CONCLUSION
154 -15.614982 In this paper, a plasma monopole antenna and metal
156 -14.498664 monopole antenna has been designed, simulated, optimized and
158 -13.386091 analyzed using CST software. Based on simulation results
160 -12.343182 plasma elements can be used to work as an antenna besides
using metal.
B. Effects due to radius of the plasma column. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Fig. 8 shows the return loss S1,1 (dB) against frequency The authors would like to thank to everyone for their helps
(MHz) with different radius of the plasma column various and supports in completing this project especially to
from 5.2mm until 6.2mm in 0.2mm increments respectively. Microwave Technology Centre (MTC), UniversitiTeknologi
From the graph, when the radius of plasma column increases Mara (UiTM) for the great support and guidance.
the resonant frequency
f shifted to upward. REFERENCES
S 1, 1 (dB)
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Figure 8. Changes in radius of plasma column.
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