Plasma antennas for future advanced communication systems

Summary form only given. Plasma antennas show many advantages over conventional metal antennas. These include being resistant to electronic warfare, becoming effectively invisible to radar, and exhibiting much less thermal noise thereby permitting faster data rates. They can be dynamically tuned and reconfigured for frequency, direction, bandwidth, gain, and beamwidth, so replacing the need for multiple antennas. A plasma antenna that is capable of producing advanced antenna characteristics compared to the conventional metal antennas is presented. A 3D particle-in-cell (PIC) electromagnetic solver-VORPAL is employed to simulate the plasma characteristics. A prototype antenna using a fluorescent lamp has been built. Preliminary measurement results will be compared with the theoretical predicted results.