A study on plasma antenna characteristics with different gases

This paper investigates the return loss characteristics of plasma antenna with 3 different gases. For this experiment, 3 plasma antennas were fabricated using glass tubes to contain 3 different gases which are neon, argon and xenon with pressure of 1 Torr. RF heating method was used to ionize the gases into plasma state. The return loss characteristic of each of the fabricated plasma antenna is measured using a vector network analyzer, to demonstrate the capability and potential of the antenna. It was found that the all gas yields return loss below -10 dB in the range of 3.5 GHz to 5.5 GHz. Return loss of the plasma tube with plasma is better than without plasma in all cases. Neon gas yielded a 200 MHz shift in the optimum frequency when measured with plasma.