Development of a novel spiral antenna system for low loop voltage current start up atSteady State Superconducting Tokamak(SST-1).

In general, superconducting tokamaks require low loop voltage current start up for the safety purpose of its poloidal field coils. The loop voltage inside the vacuum vessel of Steady-state Superconducting Tokamak (SST-1) is low in nature since its central solenoid is located outside the cryostat. The low loop voltage current start up of the SST-1 is routinely performed by Electron Cyclotron Resonance (ECR) method at the toroidal magnetic field Bt=1.5T(first harmonic) and 0.75T(second harmonic). Recently, an alternative RF based plasma current start up system had been planned for operating the machine specially for higher toroidal magnetic field regime 1.5T ≤ Bt ≤3T. The system is already developed based on an antenna system, made of series combinations of two at spiral antenna, to assist plasma current start up at lower inductive electric field. It is already tested and installed in SST-1 chamber. The system testing had been performed without background magnetic field within frequency regime 35-60MHz at present. The test results show that it can produce electron density ne ≈1016m-3 measured by the Langmuir probe in expense of 500W RF power. The spectroscopy results indicate that its capability to produce plasma density higher than 1013 m-3 and electron temperature Te = 2 -6eV. In addition, it also shows that the presence of turbulent electric field of the order of 106V/m at antenna center and finite anomalous temperature of neutral particles. Calculations show that the obtained density is enough for SST-1 low loop voltage plasma breakdown. The antenna system is also capable to produce plasma at higher frequencies. This article will discuss the development of the prototype and the installed antenna system along with their test results in detail.

Single-Arm Archimedean Spiral Antenna with Broadband Circular Polarization

In this paper, a single-arm Archimedean spiral (SAAS) antenna with broadband circular polarization is investigated. Unlike traditional single-arm Archimedean spiral antenna, the antenna arm consists of a hybrid meandered strip line and a smooth arc strip line. Especially at low frequencies, the meandered strip line significantly improves the circular polarization performance by extending the antenna surface current path. The effects of the meandered strip line on the radiation pattern and axial ratio (AR) are studied in detail. To obtain unidirectional radiation, a metallic cavity is added below the SAAS antenna. The measurement results show that the voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) is less than 2 from 0.88 GHz to 8.82 GHz, which indicates a wide impedance bandwidth of 1 : 10 is realized. A wide AR bandwidth of 1 : 5 is available, that the measured AR is less than 3 dB from 1.6 GHz to 8 GHz.

A Novel Antenna for UHF RFID Near-Field Applications

This paper proposed a novel antenna for ultra-high frequency (UHF) radio frequency identification (RFID) near-field applications with uniform distribution of the electric field along the x-axis (Ex), and the y-axis (Ey). The proposed antenna adopted a spiral structure to achieve broadband and multi-polarization. The novel antenna achieved good impedance matching within 860–960 MHz. Using a ground plate, the proposed antenna achieved low far-field gain and a maximum gain of less than −11 dBi. The component of the excited electric field Ex and Ey parallel to the antenna surface was uniformly distributed, and there was no zero point. The proposed antenna achieved a 100% read rate of tags parallel to its surface in the reading area of 150 mm × 150 mm × 220 mm. Simulation results were consistent with the results of real-world measurements, and the proposed antenna was suitable as a reader antenna in near-field applications. The polarization mode of RFID tags is mostly linear polarization, and the placement of tags in practical applications is diversified. Compared with the traditional RFID reader antenna, the proposed antenna achieves uniform electric field distribution parallel to the antenna surface, but the single-direction electric field has zero-reading points, which is easy to cause the misread of tags. The RFID tags can be read more accurately. To verify the scalability of the reading area of the spiral antenna unit, it was used for array design, and simulations were conducted using 1 × 2, 2 × 2,1 × 4, and 2 × 4 arrays. The component distribution of the electric field excited by the four array antennas in the x and y directions was uniform and the reading area was controllable. Therefore, the proposed spiral antenna has the expandability of the reading area and can meet the needs of different application scenarios by changing the number of array units. With the array extension, the matching network also extends, and the impedance characteristics of the array antenna are somewhat different, but they also meet the application requirements.

Novel Broadband Slot-Spiral Antenna for Terahertz Applications

We report a novel broadband slot-spiral antenna that can be integrated with high-electron-mobility transistor (HEMT) terahertz (THz) detectors. The effect of various antenna parameters on the transmission efficiency of the slot-spiral structure at 150–450 GHz is investigated systematically. The performances of the slot-spiral antenna and the spiral antenna both integrated with HEMTs are compared. The results show that the slot-spiral structure has a better transmission and miniaturization capability than the spiral structure. A formula for the responsivity is derived based on the transmission line principle and antenna theory, and results show that the detector responsivity is correlated with the antenna absorptivity. Additionally, guidelines for HEMT THz detector design are proposed. The results of this study indicate the excellent application prospects of the slot-spiral antenna in THz detection and imaging.