Development of an economic and effective microwave absorber

This paper describes about the design and method in developing a low cost, reliable and good performance microwave absorber for the application in anechoic chamber room measurement. Theoretically, the absorber is designed to be functioning at frequency range from 1.5 GHz to 15 GHz and in pyramidal-shaped. However due to the equipment limitation for measurement, the absorber is only tested for 2 GHz and 10 GHz frequency. The pyramidal-shaped was chosen since its performance has been proved to work at microwave frequency. A survey on materials that can be used to coat the absorber has been carried out and variety of the materials was tested. The absorbers are made from polystyrene, which were cut into pyramidal shape and then coated with carbon. The measurement of the pyramidal absorber was done in order to determine its performance. Lastly, the results are compared to commercialized absorber available in UiTM Pulau Pinang. The absorber that has been developed is called low cost absorber.