A reconfigurable frequency selective structure using plasma arrays

Abstract

In this paper, a novel structure composed of frequency selective surface and plasma arrays is proposed to control the propagation of the free space electromagnetic wave in the X band of the microwave spectrum. Plasma is hard to be used for controlling the propagation of microwave due to its electron density, electron temperature, spatial volume, and distribution continuity, which are too rigorous to be satisfied for most plasma generation methodologies. The idea of this paper lies in that the impedance characteristics of the plasmas could be effectively tuned by periodic structures so that the wave propagation tuning effects of plasmas could be activated under conditions of restricted dimensions of (0.27–0.41)λ0, where the plasma arrays are shown not to be effective alone. The system is described based on transmission line approximation, and the characteristic lumped units have been analyzed using experimental data fitting. It is argued that the properties and the methodology discussed in this paper could be applied in the design of artificial microwave media, especially in the field of active absorbing frequency selective surfaces.

Reconfigurable Plasma Composite Absorber Coupled With Pixelated Frequency Selective Surface Generated by FD-CGAN

“…The lumped parameters of the equivalent circuit model are determined so that an acceptable agreement is observed between the results of the equivalent circuit model and those of the experimental results, as shown in Table I. The equivalent resistance of glow discharge plasma can be approximated by the resistivity model [32] ρ ≈ πe 2 m 1/2 (4πε 0 ) 2 (KT e ) 3/2 ln ,…”

“…plasmas [2], the spatial refractivity of plasmas is tunable and fast-switchable, so its reconfigurability can be achieved by the electrical control [3]. Three particularities of plasma place technical demands on the preparation of microwave-active plasmas that are difficult to implement: the absorption capacity of a collisional plasma is determined by the oscillation and collision behavior of electronic dipoles [4], i.e., the high absorption capacity depends on the plasma with high densities in the certain wavelength range; the scale of volumetric plasma needs to be large enough compared to the wavelength of the incident EM wave [5]; and achieving high electron number density is unavoidably accompanied by the high power and heating scenarios [6].…”