Prolate spheroidal antennas in isotropic plasma media

The problems of a gap-excited finite-sized prolate spheroidal antenna, with and without a confocal prolate spheroidal vacuum sheath, operated in a uniform cold and in a uniform warm lossy plasma medium, have been considered by applying boundary value problem techniques. The dependence of the input admittance, the current distribution, and the radiation pattern, upon the collision frequency, the electron temperature, the length of the antenna, the length-to-radius ratio for the antenna, the ratio of the plasma frequency to the operating frequency, and the thickness of a vacuum sheath have been investigated. Admittance curves are given from which the input admittance of a finite linear antenna can be estimated for a wide range of operating conditions and length-to-radius ratios. Conductance and susceptance maxima, dependent upon the vacuum sheath thickness, have been observed when using the cold plasma model for . When using the warm plasma model in conjunction with the boundary condition that the normal component of the fluid velocity is zero at the antenna surface and at the vacuum sheath surface, the radiation resistance of the antenna is increased significantly for the parameters considered.