Notre Dame University - Louaise

North Lebanon Campus – NLC

Faculty of Engineering - Electrical and Computer and Communication
Engineering Department

EEN 331
ELECTROMAGNETICS II

Assignment:
Hardware Assignment 1
Propagation through a Dielectric Material

Submitted to:
Dr. Elias Nassar

Submitted on:
4/3/2022

Submitted by:
JoeElie el Fadl (EE)
ID: 20197074

Introduction:
The main goal behind this experiment is to measure the attenuation of a signal passing through a
dielectric, and in order to do so it was required to measure a Wi-Fi signal sent from a router
passing through free air, and then measure it passing through the dielectric. So inconsequence a
Wi-Fi router (Blink97B3D3) was placed 2 meters away from a phone, which in terms measured
using a Wi-Fi analyzer app the strength of the signal sent by the router in free air. Afterwards, a
dielectric which was a wooden door (maple) was placed in the middle between both the router
and the phone, and the Wi-Fi signal was measured once again. Moreover, after measuring both
signals, a person stood in front of the wooden door as an extra dielectric that will increase the
attenuation with in the signal and as follows the signal was measured for the third time. Finally,
the process of determining the attenuation within the signal was accomplished by using a matlab
code set for performing the required calculations.
.

Figure1: Measurement in free-air no di electric

 Figure2: Measurements when the Wooden door is present

Figure3: Measurements when the Wooden door and a body were present
As shown above in both figures 1 and 2, the signal strength was -42 dbm in free air in figure 1
whereas when the door was placed between both the router and the phone, the signal decreased
to -46dbm.
As a result we can conclude that the attenuation caused by the dielectric is set to be equal to 4
dbm.
In free air:
−42
10 −5
Pi=10 =6.309573445 ×10 mw
When the dielectric is applied:
−46
Pd=10 10
=2.511886432×10−5 mw

So the shielding effectiveness equals:

Pi 6.309573445×10−5
SE=10 log =10 log =4 dbm
Pd 2.511886432×10−5
Therefore 4dbm is the value of the shield effectiveness

Now it is required to input the parameters of wood at 2.45 GHz to the Matlab code and obtain
the shielding effectiveness found previously
The material used is Maple wood as mention before, then the:
_Relative permittivity = 4.4
_Relative permeability = 1
_Thickness =4cm = 0.04 m
_Conductivity of the wood = 0 s/m
_frequency = 2.45GHz
Matlab Code:
%{
Name: JoeElie el Fadl
ID: 20197074
Description: Matlab code for determining the attenuation
%}

% Constants
mew0 = 4*pi*10^-7; % permeability constant
epsilon0 = 8.854*10^-12; % permittivity constant
etta0 = 120*pi; % intrinsic impedance of air

% Researched Constants
epsilonr = 4.4; % relative permittivity of the wood
mewr = 1; % relative permeability of the wood
width = 0.04; % width of the wood
f = 2.45*10^9; % frequency of the signal
sigma = 0; % conductivity of wood

% Calculations
w = 2*pi*f; % angular frequency of the signal
mew = mewr*mew0; % total permeability of wood
epsilon = epsilonr*epsilon0; % total permittiviy of wood

% Used Values
a = 1i*w*mew;
b = sigma + 1i*w*epsilon;

% More Calculations
gamma = sqrt(a*b); % attenuation
etta = sqrt(a/b); % intrinsic impedance of wood

C = tanh(gamma*width);
Zin = (etta*(etta0 + etta*C)) / (etta + etta0*C);
taud = 2*Zin / (Zin + etta0);
tau0 = 2*etta0 / (etta0 + etta);
r = abs(taud*tau0*exp(-gamma*width));

SE = -20*log10(r); % Shielding effectiveness

disp("Shielding Effectiveness = " + SE + " dbm");

 fig4-Shield effectiveness using matlab

4−3.8889
Error: 4
× 100=2.7775 %

Then 2.7775% is the percentage of error between both the theoretical value and the
experimental value.
Furthermore, these errors are caused due to several factors:
_The app’s approximation values displayed in dbm
_ Errors affecting the signal’s strength due to the surrounding, causing the values
to differ.
_ inaccurate placements for the phone and the router where they might be a bit
tilted.
_ inaccurate value for the permittivity, since the door might have different
materials other than maple wood while being made.

Conclusion:
As a conclusion, it could be said that the attenuation for the signal when placing
the wooden door is 4dbm, and what proves the matter is that the error in the
experiment is set to considered as too small and unimportant, as it is less than 5%.