Assessment of the performance of the TOPGNSS and ANN-MB antennas for ionospheric measurements using low-cost u-blox GNSS receivers

Low-cost GNSS receivers have recently been gaining reliability as good candidates for ionospheric studies. In line with these gains are genuine concerns about improving the performance of these receivers. In this work, we present a comprehensive investigation of the performances of two antennas(the u-blox ANN-MB and the TOPGNSS TOP-106) used on a low-cost GNSS receiver known as the u-blox ZED-F9P. The two antennas were installed on two identical and co-located u-blox receivers. Data used from both receivers cover the period from January to June 2022. Results from the study indicate that the signal strengths are dominantly greater for the receiver with the TOPGNSS antenna than for the receiver with the ANN-MB antenna, implying that the TOPGNSS antenna is better than the ANN-MB antenna in terms of providing greater signal strengths. Summarily, the TOPGNSS antenna also performed better in minimizing the occurrence of cycle slips on phase TEC measurements. There are no conspicuous differences between the variances(computed as 5-min standard deviations) of phase TEC measurements for the two antennas, except for a period around May-June when the TOPGNSS gave a better performance in terms of minimizing the variances in phase TEC. Remarkably, the ANN-MB antenna gave a better performance than the TOPGNSS antenna in terms of minimizing the variances in pseudorange TEC for some satellite observations. For precise horizontal(North and East) positioning, the receiver with the TOPGNSS antenna gave better results, while the receiver with the ANN-MB antenna gave better vertical(Up) positioning. The errors for the receivers of both antennas are typically within about 5 m(the monthly mean was usually smaller than 1 m) in the horizontal direction and within about 10 m(the monthly mean was usually smaller than 4 m) in the vertical direction.

Kinematic-mapping-model-guided analysis and optimization of 2-PSS&1-RR circular-rail parallel mechanism for fully steerable phased array antennas

This paper presents a systematic methodology for analyzing and optimizing an innovative antenna mount designed for phased array antennas, implemented through a novel 2-PSS&1-RR circular-rail parallel mechanism. Initially, a comparative motion analysis between the 3D model of the mount and its full-scale prototype is conducted to validate effectiveness. Given the inherent complexity, a kinematic mapping model is established between the mount and the crank-slider linkage, providing a guiding framework for subsequent analysis and optimization. Guided by this model, feasible inverse and forward solutions are derived, enabling precise identification of stiffness singularities. The concept of singularity distance is thus introduced to reflect the structural stiffness of the mount. Subsequently, also guided by the mapping model, a heuristic algorithm incorporating two backtracking procedures is developed to reduce the mount's mass. Additionally, a parametric finite-element model is employed to explore the relation between singularity distance and structural stiffness. The results indicate a significant reduction(about 16%) in the antenna mount's mass through the developed algorithm, while highlighting the singularity distance as an effective stiffness indicator for this type of antenna mount.

Array (Smart) Antennas Improve GSM Performance

As wireless data applications over cellular networks become more widespread, the pressure to increase capacity will become even more intense. Capacity in the 800 and 900 MHz bands, where bandwidth is restricted, is already becoming a limiting factor. This paper attempts to address how the application of smart antenna systems has brought about improvements in call quality and increased capacity through reduced Interference in Mobile Communication. The smart antenna may be in a variety of ways to improve the performance of a communications system. Perhaps most importantly is its capability to cancel co-channel interference. It helps in improving the system performance by increasing the channel capacity, spectrum efficiency, extending range coverage, speech quality, enabling tighter reuse of frequencies within a cellular network and economically, feasible increased signal gain, greater, reduced multipath reflection. It has been argued that Smart antennas and the Algorithms to control them are vital to a high-capacity communication system development.

Physical-Layer Key Generation Based on Multipath Channel Diversity Using Dynamic Metasurface Antennas

Physical layer key generation(PKG)technology leverages the reciprocal channel randomness to generate the shared secret keys.The low secret key capacity of the existing PKG schemes is due to the reduction in degree-of-freedom from multipath fading channels to multipath combined channels.To improve the wireless key generation rate,we propose a multipath channel diversity-based PKG scheme.Assisted by dynamic metasurface antennas(DMA),a two-stage multipath channel parameter estimation algorithm is proposed to efficiently realize super-resolution multipath parameter estimation.The proposed algorithm first estimates the angle of arrival(AOA)based on the reconfigurable radiation pattern of DMA,and then utilizes the results to design the training beamforming and receive beamforming to improve the estimation accuracy of the path gain.After multipath separation and parameter estimation,multi-dimensional independent path gains are utilized for generating secret keys.Finally,we analyze the security and complexity of the proposed scheme and give an upper bound on the secret key capacity in the high signal-to-noise ratio(SNR)region.The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can greatly improve the secret key capacity compared with the existing schemes.

Analysis and Design of Broadband Stacked Microstrip Patch Antennas

A broadband microstrip patch antenna was analyzed and designed.Full wave analysis method(FWAM) was employed to show that a stacked microstrip dual patch antenna(SMDPA) might have a much wider bandwidth than that of the ordinanry uni patch one.By means of discrete complex image theory(DCIT),the Sommerfeld integrals (SI) involved were accurately calculated at a speed several hundred times faster than numerical integration method(NIM).The feeding structure of the SMDPA was then improved and the bandwidth was extended to about 22% or more for voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR)s≤2 Finally,a matching network was constructed to obtain a bandwidth of about 25% for s≤1.5.

The Tianma 65 m radio telescope antenna

The Tianma 65 m radio telescope(TMRT)at Shanghai is a fully steerable single-dish radio telescope in China,operating at centimeter to millimeter wavelengths(1.25 GHz to 50 GHz).This paper presents details on the main specifications,design,performance analysis,testing,and construction of the telescope antenna.The measured total efficiency is better than 50%over the whole elevation angle range,first sidelobe levels are less than−20 dB,antenna system noise temperatures are less than 70 K at 30°elevation angle,and pointing accuracy is less than 3″.The measured and calculated results are in good agreement,verifying the effectiveness of the design and analysis.

Dielectric Resonator Magnetoelectric Dipole Arrays with Low Cross Polarization,Backward Radiation,and Mutual Coupling for MIMO Base Station Applications

Dielectric resonator magnetoelectric dipole(DRMED)arrays with enhanced isolation,reduced cross-polarization,and backward radiation are proposed for base station(BS)applications.The proposed antenna comprises an elevated dielectric resonator antenna(DRA)on a small metal plate above a sizeable common ground plane.The DRA is designed in its T Eδ11 mode,acting like a magnetic dipole.The surface current excited by the differential probes flowing on the small ground plane is equivalent to an electric dipole.Since these two equivalent dipoles are orthogonal,they have the magnetoelectric dipole characteristics with reduced backward radiation.Meanwhile,the small ground planes can be treated as decoupling structures to provide a neutralization path to cancel the original coupling path.A linearly-polarized 4-element prototype array was verified experimentally in previous work.Here,a dual-polarized DRMED antenna is presented to construct a 2-element and 4×4 array for BS applications.To investigate its MIMO performance,sophisticated multi-cell scenario simulations are carried out.By using the proposed dualpolarized DRMED array,the cellular system capacityis improved by 118.6%compared to a conventional DRA array.This significant MIMO system improvement is mainly due to the reduced backward radiation and,therefore,reduced inter-cell interferences.Measurements align well with the simulations.

Dual-band multi-beam reconfigurable terahertz antenna based on graphene frequency selective surface

In this paper,a dual-band graphene-based frequency selective surface(GFSS)is investigated and the operating mechanism of this GFSS is analyzed.By adjusting the bias voltage to control the graphene chemical po-tential between 0 eV and 0.5 eV,the GFSS can achieve four working states:dual-band passband,high-pass lowimpedance,low-pass high-impedance,and band-stop.Based on this GFSS,a hexagonal radome on a broadband omnidirectional monopole antenna is proposed,which can achieve independent 360°six-beam omnidirectional scanning at 1.08 THz and 1.58 THz dual bands.In addition,while increasing the directionality,the peak gains of the dual bands reach 7.44 dBi and 6.67 dBi,respectively.This work provides a simple method for realizing multi-band terahertz multi-beam reconfigurable antennas.

A 27 GHz,simple 2-bit 1×8 phased array

This study demonstrates a simple 2-bit phased array operating at 27 GHz that supports one-dimensional beam scanning with left-handed circular polarization(LHCP).The antenna is constructed using a compact four-layer printed circuit board(PCB)structure,consisting of a 90°phase shifter layer with microstrip structures,a ground(GND)layer,a direct current(DC)control layer,and a circularly polarized annular radiation patch layer with 1-bit phase shifting.Based on the proposed unit structure,a 1×8 array with half-wavelength inter-element spacing was designed and validated.Experimental results show that the array achieves a peak gain of 10.23 dBi and is capable of beam scanning within±50°.

Prediction of Bandwidth of Metamaterial Antenna Using Pearson Kernel-Based Techniques

The use of metamaterial enhances the performance of a specific class of antennas known as metamaterial antennas.The radiation cost and quality factor of the antenna are influenced by the size of the antenna.Metamaterial antennas allow for the circumvention of the bandwidth restriction for small antennas.Antenna parameters have recently been predicted using machine learning algorithms in existing literature.Machine learning can take the place of the manual process of experimenting to find the ideal simulated antenna parameters.The accuracy of the prediction will be primarily dependent on the model that is used.In this paper,a novel method for forecasting the bandwidth of the metamaterial antenna is proposed,based on using the Pearson Kernel as a standard kernel.Along with these new approaches,this paper suggests a unique hypersphere-based normalization to normalize the values of the dataset attributes and a dimensionality reduction method based on the Pearson kernel to reduce the dimension.A novel algorithm for optimizing the parameters of Convolutional Neural Network(CNN)based on improved Bat Algorithm-based Optimization with Pearson Mutation(BAO-PM)is also presented in this work.The prediction results of the proposed work are better when compared to the existing models in the literature.

Physical design and recent experimental results of the new ICRF antenna on EAST

Two new ICRF antennas operating in the ion cyclotron radio frequency(ICRF) range have been developed for EAST to overcome the low coupling problem of the original antennas.The original ICRF antennas were limited in their power capacity due to insufficient coupling.The new antenna design takes into account both wave coupling and absorption processes through comprehensive wave coupling and absorption codes,with the dominant parallel wave number k∥of 7.5 m-1at dipole phasing.Through the use of these new ICRF antennas,we are able to achieve 3.8 MW output power and 360 s operation,respectively.The initial experimental results demonstrate the reliability of the antenna design method.

Deployment Dynamic Modeling and Driving Schemes for a Ring-Truss Deployable Antenna

Mesh reflector antennas are widely used in space tasks owing to their light weight,high surface accuracy,and large folding ratio.They are stowed during launch and then fully deployed in orbit to form a mesh reflector that transmits signals.Smooth deployment is essential for duty services;therefore,accurate and efficient dynamic modeling and analysis of the deployment process are essential.One major challenge is depicting time-varying resistance of the cable network and capturing the cable-truss coupling behavior during the deployment process.This paper proposes a general dynamic analysis methodology for cable-truss coupling.Considering the topological diversity and geometric nonlinearity,the cable network's equilibrium equation is derived,and an explicit expression of the time-varying tension of the boundary cables,which provides the main resistance in truss deployment,is obtained.The deployment dynamic model is established,which considers the coupling effect between the soft cables and deployable truss.The effects of the antenna's driving modes and parameters on the dynamic deployment performance were investigated.A scaled prototype was manufactured,and the deployment experiment was conducted to verify the accuracy of the proposed modeling method.The proposed methodology is suitable for general cable antennas with arbitrary topologies and parameters,providing theoretical guidance for the dynamic performance evaluation of antenna driving schemes.

Microstrip Patch Antenna with an Inverted T-Type Notch in the Partial Ground for Breast Cancer Detections

This study designs a microstrip patch antenna with an inverted T-type notch in the partial ground to detect tumorcells inside the human breast.The size of the current antenna is small enough(18mm×21mm×1.6mm)todistribute around the breast phantom.The operating frequency has been observed from6–14GHzwith a minimumreturn loss of−61.18 dB and themaximumgain of current proposed antenna is 5.8 dBiwhich is flexiblewith respectto the size of antenna.After the distribution of eight antennas around the breast phantom,the return loss curveswere observed in the presence and absence of tumor cells inside the breast phantom,and these observations showa sharp difference between the presence and absence of tumor cells.The simulated results show that this proposedantenna is suitable for early detection of cancerous cells inside the breast.

Design of compact integrated diamond nitrogen-vacancy center quantum probe

An integrated quantum probe for magnetic field imaging is proposed,where the nitrogen–vacancy(NV)center fixed at the fiber tip is located on the periphery of flexible ring resonator.Using flexible polyimide(PI)as the substrate medium,we design a circular microstrip antenna,which can achieve a bandwidth of 140 MHz at Zeeman splitting frequency of 2.87 GHz,specifically suitable for NV center experiments.Subsequently,this antenna is seamlessly fixed at a three-dimensional-printed cylindrical support,allowing the optical fiber tip to extend out of a dedicated aperture.To mitigate errors originating from processing,precise tuning within a narrow range can be achieved by adjusting the conformal amplitude.Finally,we image the microwave magnetic field around the integrated probe with high resolution,and determine the suitable area for placing the fiber tip(SAP).

In Situ Atomic Reconstruction Engineering Modulating Graphene-Like MXene-Based Multifunctional Electromagnetic Devices Covering Multi-Spectrum

With the diversified development of big data,detection and precision guidance technologies,electromagnetic(EM)functional materials and devices serving multiple spectrums have become a hot topic.Exploring the multispectral response of materials is a challenging and meaningful scientific question.In this study,MXene/TiO_(2)hybrids with tunable conduction loss and polarization relaxation are fabricated by in situ atomic reconstruction engineering.More importantly,MXene/TiO_(2)hybrids exhibit adjustable spectral responses in the GHz,infrared and visible spectrums,and several EM devices are constructed based on this.An antenna array provides excellent EM energy harvesting in multiple microwave bands,with|S11|up to−63.2 dB,and can be tuned by the degree of bending.An ultra-wideband bandpass filter realizes a passband of about 5.4 GHz and effectively suppresses the transmission of EM signals in the stopband.An infrared stealth device has an emissivity of less than 0.2 in the infrared spectrum at wavelengths of 6-14μm.This work can provide new inspiration for the design and development of multifunctional,multi-spectrum EM devices.

Effect of antenna helicity on discharge characteristics of helicon plasma under a divergent magnetic field

The characteristics of the blue core phenomenon observed in a divergent magnetic field helicon plasma are investigated using two different helical antennas, namely right-handed and lefthanded helical antennas. The mode transition, discharge image, spatial profiles of plasma density and electron temperature are diagnosed using a Langmuir probe, a Nikon D90 camera,an intensified charge-coupled device camera and an optical emission spectrometer, respectively.The results demonstrated that the blue core phenomenon appeared in the upstream region of the discharge tube at a fixed magnetic field under both helical antennas. However, it is more likely to appear in a right-handed helical antenna, in which the plasma density and ionization rate of the helicon plasma are higher. The spatial profiles of the plasma density and electron temperature are also different in both axial and radial directions for these two kinds of helical antenna. The wavelength calculated based on the dispersion relation of the bounded whistler wave is consistent with the order of magnitude of plasma length. It is proved that the helicon plasma is part of the wave mode discharge mechanism.

A Compact UHF Antenna Based on Hilbert Fractal Elements and a Serpentine Arrangement for Detecting Partial Discharg

Efforts to protect electric power systems from faults have commonly relied on the use of ultra-high frequency(UHF)antennas for detecting partial discharge(PD)as a common precursor to faults.However,the effectiveness of existing UHF antennas suffers from a number of challenges such as limited bandwidth,relatively large physical size,and low detection sensitivity.The present study addresses these issues by proposing a compact microstrip patch antenna with fixed dimensions of 100 mm×100 mm×1.6 mm.The results of computations yield an optimized antenna design consisting of 2nd-order Hilbert fractal units positioned within a four-layer serpentine arrangement with a fractal unit connection distance of 3.0 mm.Specifically,the optimized antenna design achieves a detection bandwidth for which the voltage standing wave ratio is less than 2 that is approximately 97.3%of the UHF frequency range(0.3–3 GHz).Finally,a prototype antenna is fabricated using standard printed circuit board technology,and the results of experiments demonstrate that the proposed antenna is capable of detecting PD signals at a distance of 8 m from the discharge source.

3D electromagnetic simulation of the coupling characteristics and double-stub Ferrite tuners impedance matching for EAST ICRH four-strap antenna

A program developed with COMSOL software integrates EAST four-strap antenna coupling with the double-stub Ferrite tuners(FT)impedance matching,obtaining physical quantities crucial for predicting the overall performance of the ion cyclotron resonance heating(ICRH)antenna and matching system.These quantities encompass S-matrix,port complex impedance,reflection coefficients,electric field and voltage distribution,and optimal matching settings.In this study,we explore the relationship between S-matrix,reflection coefficients,port complex impedance,and frequency.Then,we analyze the impact of Faraday screens placement position and transparency,the distance from the Faraday screen(FS)to the current straps(CS),the relative distance between ports,and the characteristic impedance of the transmission line on the coupling characteristic impedance of the EAST ICRH system.Finally,we simulate the electric field distribution and voltage distribution of the EAST ICRH system for plasma heating with double-stub FT impedance matching.Using optimized parameters,the coupling power of the ICRH system can be approximately doubled.The results present herein may offer guidance for the design of high-power,long-pulse operation ICRH antenna systems.

Design of a Metasurface Antenna Based on Characteristic Mode Theory

A novel metasurface antenna consisting of 5×5 rectangular patch elements is presented.Thestructure with and without the central element are both analyzed by the Characteristic Mode Theory(CMT).The developed mutually orthogonal principal modes of the optimized periodic patch structure areexcited by a center-feed dipole.A differential feeding network is employed to realize impedance matching.Prototype with profile height of 0.07λ_(0)(λ_(0)is the wavelength in free space at the lowest operatingfrequency)is fabricated and assembled to verify the simulation results.The measured results show that thereflectance coefficient of proposed matesurface antenna is less than-10 dB in the whole operating bandrange from 4.2 GHz to 5.5 GHz,a relative bandwidth of 26.8%is achieved,and the maximummeasured realized gain is more than 9 dBi with a maximum radiation efficiency of 90%.The designprovides a guideline on the application of characteristic modes(CMs)to radiation problems.

A Multi-Token Sector Antenna Neighbor Discovery Protocol for Directional Ad Hoc Networks

In this paper,we propose a Multi-token Sector Antenna Neighbor Discovery(M-SAND)protocol to enhance the efficiency of neighbor discovery in asynchronous directional ad hoc networks.The central concept of our work involves maintaining multiple tokens across the network.To prevent mutual interference among multi-token holders,we introduce the time and space non-interference theorems.Furthermore,we propose a master-slave strategy between tokens.When the master token holder(MTH)performs the neighbor discovery,it decides which 1-hop neighbor is the next MTH and which 2-hop neighbors can be the new slave token holders(STHs).Using this approach,the MTH and multiple STHs can simultaneously discover their neighbors without causing interference with each other.Building on this foundation,we provide a comprehensive procedure for the M-SAND protocol.We also conduct theoretical analyses on the maximum number of STHs and the lower bound of multi-token generation probability.Finally,simulation results demonstrate the time efficiency of the M-SAND protocol.When compared to the QSAND protocol,which uses only one token,the total neighbor discovery time is reduced by 28% when 6beams and 112 nodes are employed.