Publications

Thin magnetic conductor substrate for placement-immune, electrically-small antennas

Eubanks, Travis W.; Loui, Hung L.; McDonald, Jacob J.

An antenna is considered to be placement-immune when the antenna operates effectively regardless of where it is placed. By building antennas on magnetic conductor materials, the radiated fields will be positively reinforced in the desired radiation direction instead of being negatively affected by the environment. Although this idea has been discussed thoroughly in theoretical research, the difficulty in building thin magnetic conductor materials necessary for in-phase field reflections prevents this technology from becoming more widespread. This project's purpose is to build and measure an electrically-small antenna on a new type of non-metallic, thin magnetic conductor. This problem has not been previously addressed because non-metallic, thin magnetic conductor materials have not yet been discovered. This work proposed the creation of an artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) with in-phase field reflections without using internal electric conductors, the placement of an electrically-small antenna on this magnetic conductor, and the development of a transmit-receive system that utilizes the substrate and electrically-small antenna. By not using internal electric conductors to create the AMC, the substrate thickness can be minimized. The electrically-small antenna will demonstrate the substrate's ability to make an antenna placement immune, and the transmit-receive system combines both the antenna and the substrate while adding a third layer of system complexity to demonstrate the complete idea.