Overview

A fundamental understanding of antennas, scattering, and propagation is developed. Characteristics and design principles of common antenna types such as dipoles, arrays, horns, reflectors and micro strip patches, are considered. Concepts of antenna gain and effective area are used to develop power link equations. Scattering theory is introduced and propagation phenomena are considered for real-world scenarios. Design applications include phased, Yagi and log-periodic arrays, as well as shaped-beam reflector antennas, side lobe suppression, radar target scattering, stealth principles, surface waves, HF and satellite communications.

Included in Degrees & Certificates

• 292
• 592

Prerequisites

• EC2650
• Or equivalent

Learning Outcomes

• Explain the behavior of antenna fields in the near-zone, Fresnel-zone and far-zone.
• Compute far-fields due to simple current distributions.
• Explain relationships between impedance, complex power and energy.
• Compute effective length, power gain and effective area of various antennas.
• Design phased arrays to provide specified patterns and main beam direction.
• Design Yagi array antennas to provide specified gain and front-to-back ratio.
• Design Log-Periodic array antennas to provide specified gain and bandwidth.
• Use “reciprocity” to relate antenna transmission and receiving performance.
• Use “equivalence” to evaluate fields radiated from aperture antennas and reflector antennas using equivalent aperture currents.
• Evaluate received power in terrestrial and satellite communication systems.
• Explain dominant physical mechanisms of EM scattering as frequency is varied.
• Evaluate scattered fields and find received power using the radar cross section.
• Describe important properties of surface-waves, VLF--ELF propagation, and HF ionospheric propagation including take-off angle for elevated antennas.