Lens antenna

The lens antennas use the curved surface for both transmission and reception. Lens
antennas are made up of glass, where the converging and diverging properties of lens are
followed. The lens antennas are used for higher frequency applications.
The frequency range of usage of lens antenna starts at 1000 MHz but its use is greater at
3000 MHz and above.
Construction & Working of Lens Antenna
If a light source is assumed to be present at a focal point of a lens, which is at a focal distance
from the lens, then the rays get through the lens as collimated or parallel rays on the plane
wavefront.
The rays that pass through the centre of the lens are less refracted than the rays that pass
through the edges of the lens. All of the rays are sent in parallel to the plane wave front. This
phenomenon of lens is called as divergence.

The same procedure gets reversed if a light beam is sent from right side to left of the same
lens. Then the beam gets refracted and meets at a point called focal point, at a focal distance
from the lens. This phenomenon is called convergence.

The ray diagram represents the focal point and focal length from the source to the lens. The
parallel rays obtained are also called as collimated rays.
In the above figure, the source at the focal point, at a focal distance from the lens, gets
collimated in the plane wave front. This phenomenon can be reversed which means the light
if sent from the left side, gets converged at the right side of the lens.

Advantages
• In lens antennas, feed and feed support, do not obstruct the aperture.
• It has greater design tolerance.
• Larger amount of wave, than a parabolic reflector, can be handled.
• Beam can be moved angularly with espect to the axis.
Disadvantages
• Lenses are heavy and bulky, especially at lower frequencies
• Complexity in design
• Costlier compared to reflectors, for the same specifications
Applications
• Used as wide band antenna, Especially used for Microwave frequency applications
 Fractal antenna
A fractal antenna is an antenna that uses a fractal, self-similar design to maximize the length,
or increase the perimeter (on inside sections or the outer structure), of material that can
receive or transmit electromagnetic radiation within a given total surface area or volume.
Antennas with fractal shapes, they will radiate, and often have multiband properties.

A fractal antenna's response differs markedly from traditional antenna designs, in that it is
capable of operating with good-to-excellent performance at many different frequencies
simultaneously. Normally standard antennas have to be "cut" for the frequency for which they
are to be used—and thus the standard antennas only work well at that frequency.
This makes the fractal antenna an excellent design for wideband and multiband applications.
In addition the fractal nature of the antenna shrinks its size, without the use of any
components, such as inductors or capacitors.

Plasma antenna
A plasma antenna is a type of radio antenna currently in development in which plasma is
used instead of the metal elements of a traditional antenna. A plasma antenna can be used
for both transmission and reception.
The technology uses discharge tubes to contain the plasma and are referred to as ionized gas
plasma antennas. Ionized gas plasma antennas can be turned on and off and are good for
stealth and resistance to electronic warfare and cyber attacks. Ionized gas plasma antennas
can be nested such that the higher frequency plasma antennas are placed inside lower
frequency plasma antennas. Higher frequency ionized gas plasma antenna arrays can
transmit and receive through lower frequency ionized gas plasma antenna arrays. This means
that the ionized gas plasma antennas can be co-located and ionized gas plasma antenna
arrays can be stacked. Ionized gas plasma antennas can eliminate or reduce co-site
interference. Smart ionized gas plasma antennas use plasma physics to shape and steer the
antenna beams without the need of phased arrays. Satellite signals can be steered and/or
focused in the reflective or refractive modes using banks of plasma tubes making unique
ionized gas satellite plasma antennas. The thermal noise of ionized gas plasma antennas is
less than in the corresponding metal antennas at the higher frequencies.

MIMO antenna
MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) is an antenna technology for wireless communications
in which multiple antennas are used at both the source (transmitter) and the destination
(receiver). The antennas at each end of the communications circuit are combined to minimize
errors and optimize data speed. MIMO is one of several forms of smart antenna technology,
the others being MISO (multiple input, single output) and SIMO (single input, multiple output).
MIMO technology has aroused interest because of its possible applications in digital television
(DTV), wireless local area networks (WLANs), metropolitan area networks (MANs), and
mobile communications.
 smart antenna
Smart antennas (also known as adaptive array antennas, multiple antennas and, recently,
MIMO) are antenna arrays with smart signal processing algorithms used to identify spatial
signal signature such as the direction of arrival (DOA) of the signal, and use it to calculate
beamforming vectors, to track and locate the antenna beam on the mobile/target. Smart
antennas should not be confused with reconfigurable antennas, which have similar capabilities
but are single element antennas and not antenna arrays.
Smart antenna techniques are used notably in acoustic signal processing, track and scan
radar, radio astronomy and radio telescopes, and mostly in cellular systems like W-CDMA,
UMTS, and LTE.

The smart antenna system estimates the direction of arrival of the signal, using techniques
such as MUSIC (MUltiple SIgnal Classification), estimation of signal parameters via rotational
invariance techniques (ESPRIT) algorithms, Matrix Pencil method or one of their derivatives.

Two of the main types of smart antennas include switched beam smart antennas and adaptive
array smart antennas. Switched beam systems have several available fixed beam patterns. A
decision is made as to which beam to access, at any given point in time, based upon the
requirements of the system. Adaptive arrays allow the antenna to steer the beam to any
direction of interest while simultaneously nulling interfering signals.Beamdirection can be
estimated using the so-called direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation methods