A quad-band circularly-polarized antenna, for applications of a global navigation satellite system (GNSS), 5G, and WIFI-6E, is designed, fabricated, and measured. The proposed antenna is formed by an L-shaped radiator, a rectangular frame ground with an L-shaped stub, and a rectangular strip at the opposite corner. The microstrip antenna can generate four frequency bands, covering WIFI-6E (5925–7125 MHz), 5G n77 (3300–4200 MHz), n78 (3300–3800 MHz), and the GNSS bands. This antenna generates right hand circular polarization (RHCP) waves in the low frequency band (0.95–2.11 GHz), covering GPS, BDS, GLONASS, and GALILEO applications. Moreover, an L-shaped aperture and three rectangular slits are cut on the ground to broaden the axial-ratio bandwidth at the upper band. A prototype is fabricated and measured to verify the performance of this design. It is shown that the agreement between the simulation and measurement is satisfactorily good. The measured −10 dB bandwidths for each band are 75.8% (0.95–2.11 GHz), 55.8% (3.05–5.39 GHz), 39.9% (5.84–8.19 GHz) and 10.3% (9.14–10.68 GHz), respectively. While the measured 3 dB axial-ratio bandwidths are 59.4% (1.16–2.14 GHz), 35.8% (3.23–4.64 GHz), 8.4% (5.70–6.20 GHz), and 2.6% (7.51–7.71 GHz), the measured gains are 4.56, 2.28, 4.26, and 4.30 dBi at 1.5 GHz, 3.8 GHz, 6 GHz, and 7.6 GHz, respectively.

In this article, we propose a novel detection method for underwater moving targets by detecting their extremely low frequency (ELF) emissions with inductive sensors. The ELF field source of the targets is modeled by a horizontal electric dipole at distances more than several times of the targets’ length. The formulas for the fields produced in air are derived with a three-layer model (air, seawater and seafloor) and are evaluated with a complementary numerical integration technique. A proof of concept measurement is presented. The ELF emissions from a surface ship were detected by inductive electronic and magnetic sensors as the ship was leaving a harbor. ELF signals are of substantial strength and have typical characteristic of harmonic line spectrum, and the fundamental frequency has a direct relationship with the ship’s speed. Due to the high sensitivity and low noise level of our sensors, it is capable of resolving weak ELF signals at long distance. In our experiment, a detection distance of 1300 m from the surface ship above the sea surface was realized, which shows that this method would be an appealing complement to the usual acoustic detection and magnetic anomaly detection capability.

Radio communication is a vital challenge during vehicle reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere in practice, because the plasma covering the aerospace vehicle can block the communication as the spacecraft reenters the atmosphere. To investigate the potential of the terahertz wave, the transfer function method is first applied to study the wave propagation behavior in plasma, validated by the numerical and the experimental results. The comparison of all three results shows a decent agreement, with the average absolute difference around 1.1 dB for the power loss between the theoretical and numerical results for 100 GHz and 220 GHz and around 0.8 dB for the power loss between the simulation and measurement for 100 GHz and 220 GHz, which shows the validity of the transfer function method and the great potential of the numerical model for future study. Moreover, the results shows the possibility of the application of the THz wave to deal with the blackout problem.