Characteristics of the electromagnetic wave propagation in magnetized plasma sheath and practical method for blackout mitigation

“Magnetic window”is considered as an effective method to solve the communication blackout issue.COMSOL software package based on the finite element method is utilized to simulate the propagation of right-handed circularly polarized wave in the magnetized plasma sheath.We assume a double Gaussian model of electron density and an exponential attenuation model of magnetic field.The propagation characteristics of right-handed circularly polarized wave are analyzed by the observation of the reflected,transmitted and loss coefficient.The numerical results show that the propagation of right-handed circularly polarized wave in the magnetized plasma sheath varies for different incident angles,collision frequencies,non-uniform magnetic fields and non-uniform plasma densities.We notice that reducing the wave frequency can meet the propagation conditions of whistle mode in the weak magnetized plasma sheath.And the transmittance of whistle mode is less affected by the variation of the electron density and the collision frequency.It can be used as a communication window.

Effect of attack angle on the electromagnetic wave transmission characteristics in the hypersonic plasma sheath of a re-entry vehicle

The attack angle may greatly affect the hypersonic plasma sheaths around the re-entry vehicle,thereby affecting the transmission characteristics of electromagnetic(EM)waves in the sheaths.In this paper,we propose an integrated three-dimensional(3D)model with various attack angles and realistic flying conditions of radio attenuation measurement C-II(RAM C-II)re-entry tasks for analyzing the effect of the attack angle on the transmission characteristics of EM waves in the sheaths.It is shown that the electron density and collision frequency of the sheath on the windward side can be increased by an order of magnitude with the increase of the attack angle.Meanwhile,the thickness of the sheath on the leeward side is increased where the electron density and collision frequency are reduced.The EM waves are mainly reflected on the windward plasma sheath due to the cutoff effect,and the radio-frequency(RF)blackout is mitigated if the antenna is positioned on the leeward side.Thus,by planning the trajectory properly and installing the antenna accordingly during the re-entry,it is possible to provide an approach for mitigation of the RF blackout problem to an extent.

Effect of ion stress on properties of magnetized plasma sheath

In the plasma sheath, there is a significant gradient in ion velocity, resulting in strong stress on ions treated as a fluid. This aspect has often been neglected in previous sheath studies. This study is based on the Braginskii plasma transport theory and establishes a 1D3V sheath fluid model that takes into account the ion stress effect. Under the assumption that ions undergo both electric and diamagnetic drift in the presheath region, self-consistent boundary conditions,including the ion Bohm velocity, are derived based on the property of the Sagdeev pseudopotential.Furthermore, assuming that the electron velocity at the wall follows a truncated Maxwell distribution, the wall floating potential is calculated, leading to a more accurate sheath thickness estimation. The results show that ion stress significantly reduces the sheath thickness, enhances ion Bohm velocity, wall floating potential, and ion flux at the wall. It hinders the acceleration of ions within the sheath, leading to notable alterations in the particle density profiles within the sheath. Further research indicates that in ion stress, bulk viscous stress has the greatest impact on sheath properties.

Characteristics of the plasma sheath in helium discharge within dielectric tubes

To understand the characteristics of the plasma sheath within small tubes,a 2D numerical model of He discharge within dielectric tubes is developed.During plasma propagation for a tube diameter of 0.05 mm,the sheath thickness in the plasma head is almost equal to the tube radius.It decreases rapidly to several micrometers at an axial distance of 0.05 mm behind the plasma head,and then slightly increases and saturates at the axial position far behind the plasma head.A plasma-gas sheath surrounding the central plasma column is observed for a tube diameter equal to or greater than 0.8 mm.It is replaced by a plasma-wall sheath for smaller tubes.With the decrease in the tube diameter,the sheath thickness far behind the plasma head decreases while the ion flux increases significantly.However,when O_(2)gas with a proportion of 2%is added,both the sheath thickness and ion flux decrease.

Modeling of magnetized collisional plasma sheath with nonextensive electron distribution and ionization source

The properties of an atmospheric-pressure collisional plasma sheath with nonextensively distributed electrons and hypothetical ionization source terms are studied in this work. The Bohm criterion for the magnetized plasma is extended in the presence of an ion–neutral collisional force and ionization source. The effects of electron nonextensive distribution, ionization frequency, ion–neutral collision, magnetic field angle and ion temperature on the Bohm criterion of the plasma sheath are numerically analyzed. The fluid equations are solved numerically in the plasma–wall transition region using a modified Bohm criterion as the boundary condition. The plasma sheath properties such as charged particle density, floating sheath potential and thickness are thoroughly investigated under different kinds of ion source terms, contributions of collisions, and magnetic fields. The results show that the effect of the ion source term on the properties of atmosphericpressure collisional plasma sheath is significant. As the ionization frequency increases, the Mach number of the Bohm criterion decreases and the range of possible values narrows. When the ion source is considered, the space charge density increases, the sheath potential drops more rapidly,and the sheath thickness becomes narrower. In addition, ion–neutral collision, magnetic field angle and ion temperature also significantly affect the sheath potential profile and sheath thickness.

Study of a collisionless magnetized plasma sheath with nonextensively distributed species

A weakly magnetized sheath for a collisionless, electronegative plasma comprising positive ions,electrons, and negative ions is investigated numerically using the fluid approach. The electrons are considered to be non-Maxwellian in nature and are described by Tsalli's distribution. Such electrons have a substantial effect on the sheath properties. The study also reveals that non-Maxwellian distribution is the most realistic description for negative ions in the presence of an oblique magnetic field. In addition to the negative ion temperature, the sheath potential is also affected by the nonextensive parameters. The present research finds application in the plasma processing and semiconductor industry as well as in space plasmas.

Influences of Turbulent Reentry Plasma Sheath on Wave Scattering and Propagation

The randomness of turbulent reentry plasma sheaths can affect the propagation and scattering properties of electromagnetic waves.This paper developed algorithms to estimate the influences.With the algorithms and typical reentry data,influences of GPS frequency and Ka frequency are studied respectively.Results show that,in terms of wave scattering,the scattering loss caused by the randomness of the turbulent plasma sheath increases with the increase of the ensemble average electron density,ensemble average collision frequency,electron density fluctuation and turbulence integral scale respectively.Also the scattering loss is much smaller than the dielectric loss.The scattering loss of Ka frequency is much less than that of the GPS frequency.In terms of wave propagation,the randomness arouses the fluctuations of amplitude and phase of waves.The fluctuations change with altitudes that when the altitude is below 30 km,fluctuations increase with altitude increasing,and when the altitude is above 30 km,fluctuations decrease with altitude increasing.The fluctuations of GPS frequency are strong enough to affect the tracking,telemetry,and command at appropriate conditions,while the fluctuations of Ka frequency are much more feeble.This suggests that the Ka frequency suffers less influences of the randomness of a turbulent plasma sheath.

Dynamics of Dust in a Plasma Sheath with Magnetic Field

Dynamics of dust in a plasma sheath with a magnetic field was investigated using a single particle model. The result shows that the radius, initial position, initial velocity of the dust particles and the magnetic field do effect their movement and equilibrium position in the plasma sheath. Generally, the dust particles with the same size, whatever original velocity and position they have, will locate at the same position in the end under the net actions of electrostatic, gravitational, neutral collisional, and Lorentz forces. But the dust particles will not locate in the plasma sheath if their radius is beyond a certain value.

Analysis of inverse synthetic aperture radar imaging in the presence of time-varying plasma sheath

The plasma sheath can induce radar signal modulation,causing not only ineffective target detection,but also defocusing in inverse synthetic aperture radar(ISAR)imaging.In this paper,through establishing radar echo models of the reentry object enveloped with time-varying plasma sheath,we simulated the defocusing of ISAR images in typical environment.Simulation results suggested that the ISAR defocusing is caused by false scatterings,upon which the false scatterings’formation mechanism and distribution property are analyzed and studied.The range of false scattering correlates with the electron density fluctuation frequency.The combined value of the electron density fluctuation and the pulse repetition frequency jointly determines the Doppler of false scattering.Two measurement metrics including peak signal-to-noise ratio and structural similarity are used to evaluate the influence of ISAR imaging.

Characterization and Performance Evaluation of Turbulent Plasma Sheath Channel

Radio waves are highly attenuated and distorted by turbulent plasma sheath around hypersonic vehicles in near space, leading to communication blackout. The purpose of the paper is to investigate the plasma channel characteristics and the communication performances over the channel. We treat the turbulent plasma medium as a fast fading wireless channel. The coherence time and the spectrum spread of the plasma sheath channel are obtained in terms of root-meansquare(RMS). Baseband simulation scheme is proposed based on a stratified model of the plasma flow field. Results indicate that the coherence time is on the order of milliseconds and decreases rapidly with the increasing electron density turbulence. The spectrum spread due to plasma turbulence is also significant. Extensive simulations have been carried out to make communication performance evaluations. Quantitative results show that error floor takes place for PSK and QAM, while FSK with noncoherent detection is a promising method to mitigate the blackout problem.

Adaptive protograph-based BICM-ID relying on the RJ-MCMC algorithm:a reliable and efficient transmission solution for plasma sheath channels

For reentry communication,owing to the influence of the highly dynamic plasma sheath(PS),the parasitic modulation effect can occur and the received phase shift keying(PSK)signal constellation can be severely rotated,leading to unacceptable demodulation performance degradation.In this work,an adaptive non-coherent bit-interleaved coded modulation with iterative decoding(BICM-ID)system with binary PSK(BPSK)modulation and protograph lowdensity parity-check under the PS channel is proposed.The proposed protograph-based BICMID(P-BICM-ID)system can achieve joint processing of demodulation and decoding,where the soft information is adaptively estimated by reversible-jump Markov chain Monte Carlo(RJMCMC)algorithms.Simulation results indicate that compared to existing algorithms,the proposed system can adapt well to the dynamic characteristics of the PS channel and can obtain a 5dB performance improvement at a bit error rate of 10^(-6).

Effects of pulsed magnetic field on density reduction of high flow velocity plasma sheath

A three-dimensional model is proposed in this paper to study the effect of the pulsed magnetic field on the density distribution of high flow velocity plasma sheath.Taking the typical parameters of plasma sheath at the height of 71 km as an example,the distribution characteristics and time evolution characteristics of plasma density in the flow field under the action of pulsed magnetic field,as well as the effect of self-electric field on the distribution of plasma density,are studied.The simulation results show that pulsed magnetic field can effectively reduce the density of plasma sheath.Meanwhile,the simulation results of three-dimensional plasma density distribution show that the size of the density reduction area is large enough to meet the communication requirements of the Global Position System(GPS)signal.Besides,the location of density reduction area provides a reference for the appropriate location of antenna.The time evolution of plasma density shows that the effective density reduction time can reach 62%of the pulse duration,and the maximum reduction of plasma density can reach 55%.Based on the simulation results,the mechanism of the interaction between pulsed magnetic field and plasma flow field is physically analyzed.Furthermore,the simulation results indicate that the density distributions of electrons and ions are consistent under the action of plasma self-electric field.However,the quasi neutral assumption of plasma in the flow field is not appropriate,because the self-electric field of plasma will weaken the effect of the pulsed magnetic field on the reduction of electron density,which cannot be ignored.The calculation results could provide useful information for the mitigation of communication blackout in hypersonic vehicles.

Transmission Properties of Radar Wave through Reentry Plasma Sheath

In this paper, by taking into account the coupling of the ionization of ablation gas and atmosphere, an electrons density distribution model is built. Using this model, the transmission properties of different polarization radar wave through sheath are evaluated on the basis of the transmission matrix theory. Then, we discuss the effects of the electrons density, the added magnetic field, and the radar wave frequency on the transmission properties. As a result of this investigation, greater transmission power could be gained in order to efficiently shorten communication blackout, by reducing the electrons density or choosing proper added magnetic field and the frequency of the radar wave according to the different polarization form of the radar wave.

Experimental studies of plasma sheath near meshes of different transmissivity

The measurements of the potential distributions in the boundary layer near meshes with different mesh spacing were conducted in weakly collisional plasmas using a fine-structured emissive probe and the results of the sheath thickness and electric field at the sheath-presheath edge were compared with theoretical models of collisional presheath and collisionless sheath. It was shown that, because the meshes are partially transparent to ions, the sheath is thinner and the electric field is stronger for the mesh of higher transmissivity, owing to the increased ion density in the sheath contributed from the ions transmitted from the other side of the mesh. However, the potential profiles in the presheath remain almost the same for different meshes except for the shift of the sheath-presheath edge. The thickness of the sheath decreases while the electric field at the edge increases with the increase of the neutral gas pressure. Furthermore, depending on the pressure, the measured electric fields at the edge are close to that from the models of a transition region.

Effects of some parameters on the divertor plasma sheath characteristics and fuel retention in castellated tungsten tile gaps

Castellation of plasma facing components is foreseen as the best solution for ensuring the lifetime of future fusion devices. However, the gaps between the resulting surface elements can increase fuel retention and complicate fuel removal issues. To know how the fuel is retained inside the gaps, the plasma sheath around the gaps needs to be understood first. In this work, a kinetic model is used to study plasma characteristics around the divertor gaps with the focus on the H＋ penetration depth inside the poloidal gaps, and a rate-theory model is coupled to simulate the hydrogen retention inside the tungsten gaps. By varying the magnetic field strength and plasma temperature, we find that the H＋ cyclotron radius has a significant effect on the penetration depth. Besides, the increase of magnetic field inclination angle can also increase the penetration depth. It is found in this work that parameters as well as the penetration depth strongly affect fuel retention in tungsten gaps.

Study on plasma sheath and plasma transport properties in the azimuthator

A physical model of transport in an azimuthator channel with the sheath effect resulting from the interaction between the plasma and insulation wall is established in this paper. Particle in cell simulation is carried out by the model and results show that, besides the transport due to classical and Bohm diffusions, the sheath effect can significantly influences the transport in the channel.As a result, the ion density is larger than the electron density at the exit of azimuthator, and the non-neutral plasma jet is divergent, which is unfavorable for mass separation. Then, in order to improve performance of the azimuthator, a cathode is designed to emit electrons. Experiment results have demonstrated that the auxiliary cathode can obviously compensate the space charge in the plasma.

Effect of Ion Concentrations on the Characteristics of a Multi-Component Magnetized Plasma Sheath

A hydrodynamic approach is used to investigate a three-component magnetized plasma sheath which consists of electrons and two species of positive ions. Assuming a phase space of one-dimensional spatial coordinate system and three-dimensional velocity coordinate system, the effect of different concentrations of positive ion species on some characteristics of the plasma sheath such as the velocity and density distribution of positive ion species and the electrostatic potential of this region is investigated. The calculated results show that the increase in the density ratio of positive ion species causes a decrease in both the ion velocities and the electrostatic potential of the sheath region. Also, it is shown that in the sheath region of a magnetized plasma consisting of only one positive ion species the bumps of the net density of charged particles disappears much faster. In addition, three-dimensional velocity of each positive ion species in the sheath region is plotted for different concentrations of positive ion species.

Analysis of the influence of sheath positions,flight parameters and incident wave parameters on the wave propagation in plasma sheath

The plasma sheath covering hypersonic vehicles has a significant effect on the propagation of electromagnetic waves.Based on the calculation of the flow field of a conical cylindrical,this work studies the propagation of electromagnetic waves in plasma sheath at L-band and Ku-band,and discusses the propagation characteristics in the head,side and tail of the sheath.The dielectric properties of plasma sheath are related to flight speed and altitude.A flight condition corresponds to a unique distribution of dielectric properties.For the conical cylindrical,the results show that flight speed is generally negatively correlated with the transmissivity of the plasma sheath.The reflection characteristics of electromagnetic waves at the L-band and Kuband when obliquely incident to the plasma sheath show a downward trend.When the frequency is increased to Ku-band,the propagation characteristics of electromagnetic waves in the plasma sheath are related to the position of the sheath.

Energy dissipation and power deposition of electromagnetic waves in the plasma sheath

Energy dissipation and power deposition of electromagnetic waves(EMW)in the reentry plasma sheath provide an opportunity to investigate‘communication blackout’phenomena.Based on afinite element method(FEM)simulation,we analyze variation of EMW energy dissipation and power deposition profiles dependent on the wave polarization,wave incident angle,plasma density profile and electron collision frequency.Cutoff and resonance of EMW in the plasma sheath are crucial in explaining the regulation of energy dissipation and power deposition.

Bohm Criterion in a Magnetized Plasma Sheath

Bohm criterion in a magnetized plasma sheath is investigated with a fluid model. The upper and lower limits for the sheath criterion in different states of applied magnetic field are studied. The results from numerical simulation reveal that the magnetic field affects significantly the ion Mach number. The variation of the ion Mach number with the incident angle of the ions is also presented.