Today we want to reinforce and build on many of the ideas from the first
Lecture.
We are talking about the various ways of getting high radio frequency
energy from one point to another. The basic thing about high frequencies
is that they want to ‘escape’ and leak out into space. We have seen that
transmission lines are all about ‘containing’ these fields within their
structure.
The sequence of transmission lines is:
• Parallel wire
• Coaxial
• Waveguide
• Optical fibre
There are variants like ‘stripline’ or ‘microstripline’ transmission lines
which are made on circuit board material – but they are just another ‘variety’
which we will touch on down the track.
To give an idea of the fields situation, first for the parallel wire line:
Now our whole study of antennas is all about ‘shaping’ the way an antenna
radiates – controlling the ‘pattern’ and doing that efficiently.
You need to relate these to the 3 – D picture. The “E plane” pattern is the
pattern of the Electric field in line with the wire. H lines always encircle
the wire which gives us the ‘H plane’ but in that plane we sketch an E field
result!
We revisited the idea of bending up λ/4 lengths at the ends of a parallel wire
transmission line to form a very useful ‘Half wave’ dipole:
Current at each end must always be zero (nowhere to go!) and we can
exactly fit in a half wave distribution of current as seen in the previous
sketch. We will formally analyse the performance of this particular dipole
in the next lecture.
Or:
In each case the dipole is above a ground plane conductor. There can be
NO actual radiation below that ground plane in either case BUT we can
imagine the image to be there for all analysis purposes.
Envisaging the usual donut pattern as shown here it is clear that each dipole
is in the maximum signal of the other and they are not far apart at all! In
fact we will get serious “mutual” coupling effects as summarized in the
following sketch:
The values for Z12 are presented in the following diagrams ( we will be
coming back later to understand how these are evaluated):
You simply need to read off the (complex) value of Z12 and it is
straightforward to evaluate the mutual coupling equations – there will be an
example shortly.
The mutual curves in the following simply show this same information in a
different way:
This is all background material for your first laboratory exercise. The lab
includes the use of a 900 corner reflector and as you can see from the
following this can be analysed by using 3 images:
The result of the analysis will then ive you the fields in the left hand ‘open’
900 corner reflector segment.
We can even do this with a 600 corner reflector which can be analysed with
5 images. Obviously in both of these cases there will be significant mutual
coupling effects to deal with which we will learn to cope with as we
progress.
We have met the idea of ‘imaging’ over a ground plane and you should be
comfortable with the idea that with a vertical dipole above a ground plane
can be analysed by introducing a positive image as we see here:
When you look back at the antenna from a (plane!) horizon (far away!) you
see the dipole and its image as being equal and ‘in phase’ so you would
expect a maximum there. This would be the case if the ground was a
PERFECT conductor – but of course, nothing is a perfect conductor so in
reality there will be a null right at the ground as shown here.
We now look at a very real application which makes use of horizontal
dipoles above a ground plane – we then analyse with negative images!
Because there are so many useful things to be learned from the way it works
we then proceeded to look at the Instrument Landing System (ILS) glidepath
which is in use at all major airports throughout the world for the final
approach phase of a landing aircraft.
For each 10 change in elevation the component phases change by 300 and
this progression is shown in the following sketches up to an elevation angle
of 80 . At the 00 angle I have shown the “Reference” phase as being
vertical ( that is the number of 2π (or 3600 ) phase lags from “O” ) just for
neatness! That reference phase does not change provided we move our
observation point upwards on an arc of constant radius.
You need to observe clearly that up to an elevation angle of 60 the phase of
the resultant is always constant and at the same phase to the left. At 60
there is a null in the pattern and then above this angle the phase instantly
‘flips’ by 1800 . Higher than 60 the pattern builds up again to another
maximum at 90 followed by a null again at 120 .