Effect of Plasma Area on Frequency of Monostatic Radar Cross Section Reduction

Abstract

This work reports on the effect of plasma area on the frequency characteristics of the monostatic radar cross section (RCS) of a square metallic plate. A dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma actuator consisting of 10 rings is proposed. The actuator is fabricated in three different configurations such that only three inner rings, seven inner rings, and all rings can be biased. By applying an 18-kV bias at 1 kHz, the three types of DBD actuators generate plasma with a total area of 16.96, 36.74, and 53.69 cm 2 , respectively, in a ring or circular form. The experimental results reveal that when the DBD actuator is placed in front of a 20 mm× 20 cm conducting plate, the monostatic RCS is reduced by as much as 18.5 dB in the range of 9.41-11.65 GHz. Furthermore, by generating the plasma and changing the area, the frequency of maximum reduction in the monostatic RCS of the plate can be controlled. The frequency is reduced by nearly 20% in the X band when all rings are biased. Finally, an electromagnetic model of the plasma is obtained by comparing the experimental and full-wave simulated results.Key Words: Dielectric-Barrier-Discharge Plasma, Frequency Tunable, Radar Cross Section Reduction, Surface Area of Plasma. This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ⓒ

Attenuation Effects of Plasma on Ka-Band Wave Propagation in Various Gas and Pressure Environments

“…The reduction of monostatic RCS of metallic plates due to plasma as described in [12,13] is largely due to its reflection characteristics. However, the purpose of this work is to investigate the effect of plasma on the transmission of electromagnetic waves in the Ka-band.…”

“…1 shows the proposed parallel electrode DBD generator for investigation of the attenuation effects of plasma on electromagnetic waves in the Ka-band. The electrodes of the DBD generators are placed laterally in [12,13] to generate a planar plasma, thus transforming the shape of the DBD generator electromagnetically. In contrast, we stack the electrodes vertically, as shown in in Fig.…”

“…Research on the attenuation effects of plasma on electromagnetic waves resulted in an important application of plasma: reducing the radar cross section (RCS) of a target to improve its low observability to radars [11][12][13]. In [11], measurement of a 12 cm × 12 cm metallic plate plasma showed no significant effect on the RCS, which the authors speculate is due to the very limited life time of the free electrons and the small extent of the plasma sheath.…”

“…However in [12], RCS reduction of as much as 3 dB was demonstrated experimentally at 7.4 GHz for a 20 cm × 20 cm rectangular metallic plate with a circular dielectric-barrier-discharge (DBD) plasma generator. Finally, [13] reports that the frequency of maximum RCS reduction for a 20 cm × 20 cm rectangular metallic plate can be tuned by varying the number of electrodes that generate plasma, that is, by the area and location of the Attenuation Effects of Plasma on Ka-Band Wave Propagation in Various Gas and Pressure Environments generated plasma.…”

“…It is well known that the propagation of electromagnetic waves is attenuated when plasma is introduced in their path. The attenuation characteristics of plasma are affected by the collision frequency and the electron density, which has been deeply investigated both theoretically [1][2][3][4][5] and experimentally [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13].…”