Seminar report 2011-12

SEMINAR REPORT ON PLASMA ANTENNAS

PRESENTED BY

SUJEESH.M

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER HARDWARE & MAINTANENCE

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CERTIFICATE
Certified that this is the record of the seminar on. Has been presented by.Register No.final year Computer Hardware & maintenance, Govt .Polytechnic College Palakkad on .. In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of diploma in CHM under the Directorate of technical education, Kerala State , during the year 2011-2012 Place :.. Date:... Head of the Department Staff-in-charge

Internal Examiner

External Examinor

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I express my sincere gratitude to Mr.Venugopal Head of the department, Dept of Computer

sir, my guide and Hardware and

maintenance for all his help in presenting this seminar. I express my hearfelt gratitude to all the other staff members of Dept of CHM for their valuable advice and guidance in presenting this seminar. Also I express my gratitude to my friends for all their help and cooperation Finally I express my sincere gratitude to my parents for their valuable encouragement and also for their being a source of inspiration.

SUJEESH.M

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ABSTRACT
Transmission and reception of electromagnetic waves have become an integral part of the present day civilization. Antenna is an essential device for this process. It is a transducer that transmits or receives electromagnetic waves. In other words, antennas convert electromagnetic radiation into electric current, or vice versa. Antennas are used in systems such as radio and television broadcasting, point-to-point radio communication, wireless LAN, cell phones, radar, and spacecraft communication. Antennas are most commonly employed in air or outer space, but can also be operated underwater or even through soil and rock at certain frequencies for short distances. Growing need for speed of communication network along with data handling capacity are the major forces helping to explore new vistas of transmission and reception. With the wireless generations moving from 2G to 3G, 4G, 5G and so on.

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CONTENTS

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INTRODUCTION
Advances in antenna technology are expected to play a great role in the desired speed and capacity handling capabilities of communication networks. The real benefit of upgrading the Wi-Fi networks is to get them to run faster. Wi-Fi usually can manage 54 megabits of data per second. The fancied Wi-Fig (a graphical user interface for configuring wireless connection) would handle up to 7 gigabits per second. This would mean downloading a TV show in a matter of seconds. Transmission and reception of Electromagnetic waves have become an integral part of the present day civilization. Antenna is an essential device for this process.

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ANTENNA TECHNOLOGY
Physically, an antenna is an arrangement of one or more conductors, usually called elements. In transmission, an alternating current is created in the Elements by applying a voltage at the Antenna terminals, causing the elements to radiate an electromagnetic field. In reception, the inverse occurs. An electromagnetic field from another source induces an alternating current in the elements and a corresponding voltage at the antennas terminals. Some receiving antennas (such as parabolic and horn types) incorporate shaped reflective surfaces to collect the radio waves striking them, and direct these waves onto the actual conductive elements. Some of the first rudimentary antennas were built in 1888 by Heinrich Hertz (1857-1894) in his pioneering experiments to prove the existence of electromagnetic waves predicted by the theory of James Clerk Maxwell. Hertz placed the emitter dipole at the focal point of a parabolic reflector. Since the discovery of radio frequency (RF) transmission, antenna design has been an integral part of virtually every communication and radar application. Technology has advanced to provide unique antenna designs for applications ranging from general broadcast of radio frequency signals for public use to complex weapon systems. In its most common form, an antenna represents a conducting metal surface that is sized to emit radiations at one or more selected frequencies.

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PLASMA ANTENNAS
The different states of matter generally found on earth are solid, liquid and gas. Sir William Crookes, an English physicist, identified a fourth state of matter, now called plasma, in 1879. Plasma is by far the most common form of matter. Plasma in the stars and in the tenuous space between them makes up over 99 per cent of the visible universe and perhaps most of what is not visible. Important to antenna technology, plasmas are conductive assemblies of charged and neutral particles and fields that exhibit collective effects Plasmas carry electrical currents and generate magnetic fields. A plasma antenna is a type of antenna in which the metal-conducting elements of a conventional antenna are replaced by plasma. These are radio frequency antennas that employ plasma as the guiding medium for electromagnetic radiation. The plasma antennas are essentially a cluster of thousands of diodes on a silicon chip that produces a tiny cloud of electrons when charged. These tiny, dense clouds can reflect high-frequency waves like mirrors, focusing the beams by selectively activating particular diodes. The beam-forming capability could allow ultra-fast transmission of high data loadslike those needed to seamlessly stream a TV show to an untethered tablet creating an attractive option for the next generation of supercharged wireless transmitters. Many types of plasma antennas can be constructed, including dipole, loop and reflector antennas. Plasma antennas are interpreted as various devices in which plasma with electric conductivity serves as an emitting element. In gas plasma antenna the concept is to use plasma discharge tubes as the antenna elements. When the tubes are energized, these turn into conductors, and can transmit and receive radio signals. When de-energized, these revert to non-conducting elements and do not reflect probing radio signals. The fact that the emitting element is formed over the interval needed for the emission of
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an electromagnetic pulse is an important advantage of plasma antennas. In the passive state (in the absence of plasma in the discharge tube), such a device does not exhibit electric conductivity. Higher frequencies mean shorter wavelengths and hence smaller antennas. The antenna actually becomes cheaper with the smaller size because it needs less silicon. There is a gas plasma alternative but its not solid-state, so it is bigger and contains moving partsmaking it more of a pain to manufacture. That leaves the door open for solid-state plasma antenna to be used for next generation Wi- Gig (its version 1.0 was announced in December 2009) that can reach up to 7Gbps bandwidth over frequencies up to 60 GHz.

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Development progress
Initial investigations were related to the feasibility of plasma antennas as low-radar cross-section radiating elements with further development and future commercialization of this technology. The plasma antenna R&D project has proceeded to develop a new antenna solution that minimizes antenna-detectability by radar at the first instance. But since then an investigation of the wider technical issues of existing antenna systems has revealed areas where plasma antennas might be useful. A significant progress has been made in developing plasma antennas. Present plasma antennas have been operating in the region of 1 to 10 GHz. Field trials have shown that an energized plasma reflector is essentially as effective as a metal reflector. However, when de-energised, the reflected signal drops by over 20 dB. Still some technicalities related to plasma antennas like increasing the operating plasma density without overloading the plasma discharge tubes, reducing the power required and the plasma noise caused by the ionising power supply, etc, have to be looked into in order to make them the useful technologies for wireless communication in near future. The future of high-frequency, high-speed wireless communications could very well be plasma antennas capable of transmitting focused radio waves that would quickly dissipate using conventional antennas. Thus, plasma antennas might be able to revolutionise not just high-speed wireless communications but also radar arrays and directed energy weapons. The good news is that plasma antennas will be on-the-shelf in the next couple of years. The bad news is that some military powers can use it to create a more advanced version of its existing pain beam.

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Plasma antennas to replace the metallic cones

This device is a prototype of an antenna, which uses ionized gas instead of metal to transmit and receive signals, decreasing interference and boosting the functionality. Some of its key features include the ability to focus a signal beam easily and to communicate signals in very short pulses, which could prove extremely useful in the areas of digital communications and radar.These kinds of antennas could prove themselves a valuable asset on a battlefield, where they could be easily kept out of sight, reduce the number of conventional antennas and the weight of the structure carrying such an antenna, prevent signal jamming attempts through rapid adjustments in the frequency, direction, bandwidth and other parameters.Solid metal antenna can function because electrons move freely in the metal conductor. This electronic movement is made even more easily inside the plasma antenna, because of electrons in a free state inside the hot gas. Plasma can only exist while the gas is kept very hot; as soon as the heat source is shut off, the plasma antenna returns to its previous state, in which cold gas is non conductive, but the signal emitted or received by the antenna disappears only when the plasma cools down.Conventional metal antennas can pick up various noises, or interference that bounce of the surrounding metal objects, meaning either another nearby antenna or equipment. This can be easily canceled out by the plasma antenna, since it only needs to be functional during the transmission or reception of a signal, greatly reducing the effects of interference.Potential commercial users can be found everywhere, from military forces to telephone operators and simple people.

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The producing company continues to study the commercial potential of its technology.ASI Technology Corporation, the developing company of the revolutionary antenna, was found in the 1930s and was originally a mining company, but now provides a number of services from feasibility analysis, harware design and development, to experimental testing to produce prototype systems. The antenna designed by ASI will be presented next week at the ASP Division of Plasma Physics in Orlando and consists of ceramic tubes filled with gas and emits light similar to the florescent illuminating tubes. Physicists presenting the prototype will propose a design composed of an array of many small plasma elements, which could lead to a more versatile antenna, that could be easily configured, by turning on and off parts of the elements.

Plasma Antenna
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PLASMA ANTENNAS

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PLASMA ANTENNAS

Seminar report 2011-12

PLASMA ANTENNAS

Seminar report 2011-12

PLASMA ANTENNAS

Seminar report 2011-12

PLASMA ANTENNAS

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PLASMA ANTENNAS

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APPLICATIONS
y In highspeed digital communication and radar system. y In radio antenna.

y Stealth for Millitary application. y Used for transmission and modulation Techniques(PM,AM,FM).

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Advantages of Plasma Antennas

y y y y y y y y y High power Wide bandwidth Higher efficiency Lower noise Perfect reflector Low in weight Smaller in size Improved reliability Maintenance free

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LIMITATIONS
1. The current hardware uses a wider range of frequencies so its impractically massive to be used for mobile environments. 2. Plasma antennas are expensive and hard to manufacture.

3. High-frequency signals mean that antennas operating at higher frequencies couldnt penetrate walls like conventional Wi-Fi, so signals would have to be reflected throughout the buildings.

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CONCLUSION
Plasma antennas could theoretically solve some of the limitation problems because these can operate at a wider range of frequencies, but gas antennas are also more complex (and likely more expensive) than their silicon diode counterparts, which are small enough to fit inside a cell phone. With plasma antenna technology, there are kinks to iron out, but researchers and engineers are optimistic to make this promising technology commercially available in few years.

PLASMA ANTENNAS