IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 59, NO.

2, FEBRUARY 2011

425

Experimental Characterization of a Surfaguide Fed

Plasma Antenna
Paola Russo, Member, IEEE, Valter Mariani Primiani, Member, IEEE, Graziano Cerri, Member, IEEE,
Roberto De Leo, and Eleonora Vecchioni

AbstractThe possibility of using a surfaguide device as plasma

source for plasma antenna application has been experimentally
investigated. The surfaguide was optimized, realized and used for
the ignition of a plasma column to be used as a radiating structure: the coupling with the radiated signal network and plasma
antenna efficiency were measured showing that a surfaguide can
be effectively used to create and sustain the plasma conductive
medium. A plasma diagnostic technique was also developed to
evaluate the plasma column length and plasma conductivity with
respect to the power supplied. These measurements highlighted
that plasma antenna properties are strongly affected by the pump
signal and therefore this signal has to be optimized in order to
have the highest conductivity.
Index TermsConductivity,
surfaguide.

efficiency,

plasma antennas,

I. INTRODUCTION

HE idea of using a plasma element as the conductive

medium in radio-frequency (RF) antennas and reflectors
is not new [1]: several studies have demonstrated the feasibility of such devices [2][4]. In recent years, the scientific
community has shown a growing interest in plasma antennas
mainly because of their peculiar and completely innovative
properties with respect to traditional metallic antennas. The
electromagnetic characterization of a plasma antenna according
to standard parameters requires the analysis of the physical
aspects involved in the interaction mechanism between an
electromagnetic field and a plasma; therefore new models and
experimental techniques have to be developed [5][8].
A plasma antenna can be rapidly switched on or off by applying bursts of power to a tube filled with a low pressure gas:
the power supplied ionizes the gas providing the conductive
medium for the RF signal to be radiated; in plasma antenna application two signals are needed: the pump signal that creates
and sustains the plasma column, and the signal to be radiated
(in the following simply indicated as radiated signal) that has
to be coupled to the plasma element.
Thanks to this mode of operation, the plasma antenna offers
several advantages over traditional metal antennas.
Manuscript received November 17, 2009; revised June 30, 2010; accepted
August 04, 2010. Date of publication December 03, 2010; date of current version February 02, 2011.
P. Russo, V. M. Primiani, and G. Cerri are with the Universit Politecnica
delle Marche, Ancona I-60131, Italy (e-mail: paola.russo@univpm.it).
R. De Leo is with the University of Ancona, Ancona I-60131, Italy.
E. Vecchioni was with the Universit Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona,
Italy. She is now with the Software R&D Unit, Thermowatt, SpA, Arcevia
60011, Italy.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2010.2096387

The possibility to switch on and off the plasma makes plasma

antennas suitable for the production of time varying radar cross
section elements: when plasma is on, it behaves like a conductor,
when it is off, it behaves like a dielectric material. This characteristic provides the possibility of creating reconfigurable array:
an electrical control of the ignited elements allows the modification of the array geometry and so of its radiation characteristics.
A simple linear plasma antenna can be created by using a tube
filled with a gas. The effective antenna length of the column can
easily be changed by controlling the power supplied to the pump
signal.
Finally, the electromagnetic characteristics of plasma can be
used to realize frequency selective shields.
The key point in the realization of plasma elements to be used
as plasma antennas is the ignition of the plasma column: the
pump signal network has to be optimized in order to obtain the
highest plasma conductivity with the lowest power. At the same
time, the realization of the feeding network must not degrade
the antenna radiating properties.
In the past, plasma was produced by DC or high frequency
discharges from two electrodes at opposite ends of the column;
[1] proposed a new way of producing microwave and RF discharges based on electromagnetic surface waves to sustain the
discharge: in this way plasma could be driven from only one
end of the column and electrodes should no longer be needed.
Since the 1960s studies have shown that a surface wave can
propagate along the interface between a plasma column and the
tube containing it [9], [10] but the idea of using these waves to
sustain a plasma column was only developed in the 1970s: in
[11] a surface-wave-produced discharge was identified for the
first time. On the basis of these studies, several surface-wave
plasma sources have been developed: in [5], [8] a surface wave is
launched by a capacitive coupling applying an intense field between a copper ring placed around the tube and a ground plane.
The surfaguide is another device, first proposed in [12] and illustrated in several papers [13][17], which could be used as a
plasma source, and it is by far the simplest of the surface-wave
launchers: it is a wave-guide device able to excite a surface wave
that propagates along the tube axis providing the power required
to ignite the plasma.
With respect to other plasma sources the surfaguide presents
some advantages that can be favorably considered in designing
plasma antennas: it is the most suitable device to propagate
a power signal, confining its electromagnetic field in a closed
structure; it is simple to realize, and matching stubs can easily
be inserted in the design. Moreover, it can be used to feed several plasma elements realizing arrays of antennas. Finally, it offers the possibility of using the frequency of 2450 MHz for the

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pump signal because at this frequency high power is available

with low cost.
In this paper a complete characterization of the surfaguide as
a feeding network for plasma antenna application is presented.
This is a new application of an old structure that is usually used
to produce plasma for different purposes. In this paper the geometric parameters of the surfaguide have been designed in order
to optimize the radiation properties.
In this study is also proposed a measurement set-up and described the experimental procedures followed to characterize
both the surfaguide system and the radiated signal network. In
particular a 2.45 GHz pump signal is used for antenna ignition,
and the frequency of 430 MHz is chosen for the radiated signal,
because both frequencies belong to the ISM frequency set and
can be used without particular restrictions.
The most critical aspect of the work is related to the strong
coupling between the pump and the radiated signal networks.
In fact, plasma antenna parameters have to be characterized, in
terms of efficiency, effective length and conductivity, when the
surfaguide is used to create and sustain the conductive medium.
Moreover, plasma antenna properties are also strongly affected by the pump signal and therefore they have to be self-consistently determined: in particular, plasma conductivity, that determines the metallic behavior of plasma, relies on the ionization process ignited by the pump signal.
The paper is organized as follows: Section II shows the
design, the optimization and the realization of the surfaguide
and the pump signal network used to supply the 2.45 GHz
signal; Section III illustrates the signal network and describes
the measurement of antenna efficiency; finally Section IV
reports the measurement procedures to characterize the plasma
column length and conductivity.

Fig. 1. Longitudinal section of the surfaguide. The vertical tube contains

plasma to be ignited.

Fig. 2. Longitudinal section of the surfaguide in the coupling region with the
glass tube: the simulated electric field is normalized to 1 W of incident power.

II. SURFAGUIDE: OPTIMIZATION AND REALIZATION

This section describes the realization of the surfaguide
system, designed to achieve an efficient ignition of the plasma
column; this device represents the main difference with respect
to traditional radiating systems, and is necessary to create the
antenna. The whole feeding network set-up is also important,
because it allows the power delivered to the antenna to be
controlled and the effective power required for ignition to be
measured.
A plasma column is created by applying a pump signal to
a tube containing a gas; the gas is ionized by a strong microwave electric field applied at one termination of the tube by
a surfaguide device. The surfaguide launches an azimuthally
symmetric electromagnetic surface wave that propagates along
the tube creating and sustaining the plasma column.
The surfaguide is basically a waveguide with a tapered section designed to increase the electric field strength in the reduced
height region without affecting the impedance matching. Fig. 1
shows the longitudinal section of the surfaguide: it consists of
two trunks L0 of a standard waveguide WR340, two transitions
L1, and a waveguide L2 with a reduced height. The guide is terminated by a moving short, whose length Ls can be varied for
matching when the plasma column is turned on.
Two holes along the central axis of the reduced height guide
allow the glass tube to be inserted: a commercially available

tube designed for lighting purposes was used to create the

plasma column.
The structure presented in Fig. 1 has to be optimized for
the frequency 2.45 GHz: the surfaguide geometrical parameters
need to be carefully chosen in order to have a very intense field
coinciding with the holes where the tube is inserted. The optimization of the surfaguide dimensions was achieved using the
commercial software CST Microwave Studio [18] to simulate
electromagnetic field behavior before plasma ignition; the tube
cylinder with thickness
mm, diameter
is a glass
mm, filled with a dielectric having a relative dielectric
constant
. Fig. 2 shows the electric field in the longitufield of the waveguide
dinal section of the surfaguide: the
is well-coupled with the axial TM field of the surface wave along
the glass tube that ignites the plasma: as
GHz cm
GHz cm (where is the plasma frequency) only
the first TM mode of the surface wave is expected to be excited
[14].
A parametric investigation of the field behavior was numerically carried out to determine the best values of the hole diameter D, guide height h, and transition length ; field values
were normalized to 1 W of incident power and was set to get
the maximum field which corresponds to the tube axis. To compare different situations the electric field was evaluated at three

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427

TABLE I
MAXIMUM ELECTRIC FIELD INTENSITY

Fig. 3. Pump signal network.

TABLE II
MAXIMUM ELECTRIC FIELD INTENSITY

Fig. 4. Signal connection network: the capacitive coupling between the copper
ring and the metallic box is used to feed the antenna.

The set-up shown in Fig. 3 was used to investigate the nonlinear behavior of a plasma column as a function of the power:
this aspect strongly affects the plasma antenna characteristics,
in particular, efficiency, column length and conductivity.
points: in the reduced height guide, on the internal face of the
glass tube, at the tube centre.
First of all a numerical investigation was conducted for the
and
and,
field intensity with hole diameter D and fixed h,
as expected, this showed that the narrower D is, the more intense
the field is; therefore, D is chosen as small as possible to allow
the tube to be inserted.
The behavior of the field as a function of h for fixed D, and
(Table I) is more interesting: a reduction in the guide height
increases the field inside the tube, but beyond the optimal value
a further reduction does not improve the field strength in the
tube.
Table II shows the behavior of the electric field as a function
of the taper length and the final short termination distance: also
in this case the optimal value was found, and finally the design
mm,
mm,
mm.
parameters were set:
After realizing the surfaguide, the 2.45 GHz pump signal network was developed (Fig. 3). The power needed to ionize the
gas was supplied by a magnetron generator; an isolator was inserted to prevent the high reflected power from arriving at the
signal generator and a directional coupler was used to monitor
the incident and reflected power.
The minimum power necessary to ignite a small portion of
plasma in the tube region crossing the waveguide is 2 W: on increasing the power it is possible to notice that the plasma column
height also increases.

III. MEASUREMENT OF ANTENNA EFFICIENCY

This measurement was carried out by comparing the power
delivered by the radiated signal of a plasma antenna, and the
same signal, radiated under the same conditions, by a copper
antenna. The procedure is conceptually simple, but requires
an accurate realization of the set-up in order to control: (i) the
coupling between the pump and radiated signal networks to
prevent instrument damage (Section III.A), (ii) the radiated
signal power and matching conditions for measurement accuracy (Section III.B).
A. Coupling Between Pump and Radiated Signal Networks
A preliminary measurement of the coupling between the
pump signal and the radiated signal network was performed:
coupling occurs because the signal is connected to the plasma
column.
The signal to be radiated was coupled to the plasma antenna
according to the set-up shown in Fig. 4, [5], [7]. The network
was enclosed in a metallic cubic box with a side of 6 cm, placed
below the surfaguide. The fluorescent tube comes out of the top
wall of the box through a 19 mm diameter hole, and penetrates
into the surfaguide for plasma ignition.
A capacitive coupling is generated for the radiated signal between the box and a copper ring surrounding the tube; this provides the electric field that excites the signal current along the

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TABLE III
CORRECTION FACTOR

Fig. 5. Measurement set-up used to characterize coupling between pump and

signal networks.

the same length and fed with the same signal network, as shown
in Fig. 6, but switching off the pump signal; relative efficiency
is defined as

(1)

Fig. 6. Measurement set-up for antenna relative efficiency.

plasma antenna. The copper ring is placed at about 1 mm from

the box upper wall.
The pump and signal networks are coupled by the plasma
generated in the tube. The pump generator generally provides
a high power wave that could damage the signal network, and
therefore it is necessary to quantify and reduce the coupling.
The 2.45 GHz signal coupled to the signal network was measured straightforwardly with the set-up shown in Fig. 5: the isolator exhibits a band pass between 423 and 433 MHz for the
430 MHz direct signal and an attenuation of 13.8 dB for an inverse signal at 2.45 GHz; a further protection for the spectrum
analyzer is given by the 20 dB attenuator and by the cable attenuation. The 2.45 GHz signal coupled to the signal network
dBm (3,6 dBm at the insulator) for an incident pump
is
power of 44 dBm: this attenuation is high enough to ensure that
the signal generator (later used in place of the spectrum analyzer) is not damaged for incident power up to 100 W (Fig. 6).
B. Relative Efficiency Measurement
A plasma column is characterized by a specific conductivity
given by the free electrons of the ionized gas: if this conductivity
is high enough, the plasma column can be efficiently used as
the medium for an RF signal to be radiated. However, plasma
conductivity is not as high as that of metal and therefore plasma
antenna efficiency compared with the efficiency of a traditional
metallic element has to be evaluated.
The procedure consists in measuring the field radiated by a
plasma column and the field radiated by a metallic element of

where
and
are the power received at
the spectrum analyzer when plasma and copper respectively are
used as radiating elements.
The 430 MHz generator is set at the maximum available
power (20 dBm) in order to have a good signal to noise ratio
at the receiver. The radiated signal was measured with a loop
placed in four different positions at the same distance from the
radiating element in order to check the reliability of the results
(Fig. 6).
During the first stage, measurements were carried out after
switching on the plasma element with 25 W of pump power,
which allows the complete ignition of the column. The plasma
column was then removed and substituted with a copper tube of
the same length; the pump signal was switched off because not
needed and the signal to be radiated was coupled to the copper
element in the same way as the plasma column.
Table III shows the matching conditions of the radiated
signal coupling network (Fig. 4) at 430 MHz; this preliminary measurement is necessary in order to compare the two
situations, since the efficiency has to be evaluated for the
same effective signal power passing through the antenna input
terminals. Measurements highlighted that the copper antenna
is more mismatched than the plasma element, and therefore a
correction factor of 0.9 dB was added to the power radiated by
the copper element.
Results of the power measured by the spectrum analyzer for
the plasma and the copper elements in four different positions
are reported in Table IV. It is important to point out that the
measurement of the radiated signal is a narrowband measurement around 430 MHz, while the pump signal has a 2450 MHz
frequency. This narrowband measurement reduces the 430 MHz
noise floor (when the useful signal is switched off) about 30 dB
below the useful signal peak.
In Table IV, it is possible to notice that the average performance degradation of the plasma antenna with respect to the
traditional metallic one is about 2.9 dB for all probe positions.
This means that, for the analyzed structure, about half the power
of the radiated signal is lost due to losses mechanism inside the
plasma.

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TABLE IV
RECEIVED POWER

Fig. 8. Set-up for the measurement of plasma column length and conductivity.

Fig. 7. Current probe for plasma diagnostics (a) to be put around the glass tube
(b).

IV. PLASMA COLUMN HEIGHT AND CONDUCTIVITY

MEASUREMENTS
A direct measurement of the plasma column length H and
conductivity is not possible. In fact a simple visual inspection
of the light emitted by plasma [5] to evaluate H is susceptible
to great measurement uncertainty. Moreover, the inner region of
the tube is not accessible for a direct measurement of .
As a consequence an indirect diagnostic technique to evaluate
the plasma state along the column as a function of the pump
power was developed.
The idea was to design a loop probe to be inserted around the
tube: the probe consists of a copper coil, Fig. 7(a), positioned as
shown in Fig. 7(b) and connected to a network analyzer.
depends on the maThe probe input impedance
terial wrapped by the coil, which acts as a transformer: in particular R depends on the power dissipated in the plasma because
of the currents induced by the probe itself. The idea is to relate R to the plasma state which coincides with the point where
the probe is positioned; this method was developed considering
the following assumptions: (i) conductivity depends only on the
pump signal and not on the radiated signal or on the network analyzer signal: this assumption is well satisfied because the VNA
signal is very low (10 mW) compared to the pump signal (several watts); (ii) at the measurement frequency the effects of the
wire resistance and the loop radiation resistance are negligible
with respect to the dissipation in the material filling the tube; finally, to make reasonable this assumption (iii) measurement has
to be carried out at a frequency lower than the resonance of the
coil in order to neglect the effect of the parasitic capacitances.
Moreover, as the frequency approaches the resonance of the coil,
the value of R depends not only on the conductivity , but also
on more complicated factors (radiation, field penetration into

Fig. 9. Real part of the input impedance measured with the coil placed in different positions along the column: the point coinciding with the transition region
is critical, and the corresponding curve (crossed line) is the average of a few repeated measurements.

the plasma) which affect its measurement. As a consequence of

these assumptions, the frequency range for the network analyzer
MHz.
signal was
Measurements were carried out as shown in Fig. 8: the probe
was positioned around the glass tube and connected to the network analyzer by a low pass filter to prevent the 2.45 GHz signal
from damaging the network analyzer. The plasma state of the
column was achieved by retrieving the values of R moving the
probe along the tube.
A. Plasma Antenna Height
The input impedance was first measured when no pump
power was applied to the gas tube (gray line in Fig. 9). Subsequently the pump power was switched on and the gas inside
the tube was ionized; as the power becomes greater, the plasma
column length increases. Supplying a fixed pump power to the
column, the plasma is ignited for only a certain length. The coil
was then moved along the column to appreciate how the plasma
state varies in the longitudinal direction: as the distance from
the surfaguide increases, R becomes smaller, and, coinciding
with the position where the conductivity is no longer significant
(28 cm in Fig. 9), the real part is the same as measured when
no pump signal is applied. This position at which the antenna is
considered switched off (Fig. 9) determines the plasma column
length.
This result allows us to determine the profile of the plasma
column length with respect to the pump power. Fig. 10 shows
the experimental results for the plasma column height compared
with those obtained with a different feeding network in [5]. In
both situations the column height is proportional to the square

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Fig. 10. Plasma column length as a function of the absorbed power.

Fig. 12. Real part of the input impedance measured on test-tubes of known
conductivity, numerical vs experimental.

Fig. 11. Copper coil simulated with CST.

root of the power; the difference in values is due to the different

pump signal networks, gas pressure, and composition. Moreover, in this study the column height was determined by measuring a significant electrical parameter rather than by a simple
visual inspection.
Fig. 13. Relationship between R and  numerically recovered for three different plasma (layer) radial thicknesses.

B. Plasma Conductivity
The same set-up shown in Fig. 8 was used to measure the
plasma conductivity along the column: this is a key parameter
because it affects all the radiation properties of plasma antennas.
As a direct measurement is not possible, its value has to be inferred from R, determined for each probe position along the tube
according to the procedure described in the previous section. A
power balance between the power absorbed by the probe resistance R and the power lost in the plasma region surrounded by
the coil allows us to recover a relationship between R and [19]

(2)
In (2) the dependence of R on frequency and conductivity is
explicitly written. In our case the value of the constant cannot
be analytically calculated, therefore it has to be evaluated after
a proper calibration of the probe. Calibration was performed by
simulating the probe with the commercial software CST-Microwave Studio [18] as shown in Fig. 11.
Numerical results were compared with some measurements
in order to check the accuracy of the simulations and to provide the self-consistency of the procedure. was measured by
putting the probe around some test-tubes filled with homogeneous solutions of known conductivity and permeability which
were then simulated with the aforementioned numerical tool.

The frequency range chosen was lower than 150 MHz in order
to be far enough from the resonance of the coil (380 MHz) and
to be sure that any variation in the permittivity of the material
would not affect the measurements of the real part of the input
impedance.
Fig. 12 reports the values measured and simulated for three
different test-tubes showing a good agreement between the experimental and numerical results. Moreover, in the frequency
and it is proportional to the
range chosen, increases with
conductivity predicted by (2).
The numerical results obtained for different material filling
the glass tube could be used to obtain the desired relationship
with a good approximation, but in a plasma antenna
it strongly depends on the charge distribution inside the tube. It
is well-known from literature that plasma is mostly distributed
along the inner surface of the tube [20], [21], but we are not able
to appreciate experimentally the radial profile of conductivity.
As an example, Fig. 13 shows the results obtained for a plasma
uniformly distributed in an annular region of radial thickness
mm,
mm,
mm respectively.
The uncertainty of the conductivity radial profile also affects
its distribution along the tube: Fig. 14 shows three different
longitudinal profiles of plasma conductivity with respect to the

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TABLE V
RECEIVED POWER

Fig. 14. Plasma conductivity with respect to tube length.

length of the tube, determined from the R measurement along

the plasma tube.
Results show that the knowledge of plasma thickness is essential for determining the conductivity profile. Actually the unknowns of the problem are two: plasma thickness and its conductivity. The knowledge of the loop input impedance is not
sufficient to resolve the problem. It is necessary to add another
independent parameter that depends on both the unknowns: the
relative efficiency and R, measured along the tube, permit to recover both the unknowns.

C. Method of Moments (MoM) Simulation of Antenna Relative

Efficiency
The goal of the MoM simulation is the theoretical determination of plasma antenna efficiency at the frequency of the radiated
signal (430 MHz) for different plasma conductivity profiles. A
comparison between the efficiency obtained with the MoM simulation and the efficiency measured in Section III allows both
an estimation of the value of and an estimation of the plasma
thickness.
In this section a dipole antenna with conductivity variation
along its length, as in the case of a plasma antenna, is investigated. The classic approach based on the electric field integral equation (EFIE) was adopted, and thin wire approximation
(TWA) was assumed; the antenna is considered as a monopole
of length H over a ground plane.
With reference to the coordinate system in Fig. 1, for the
, the EFIE to be satisfied on the antenna
scalar component
surface can be written as

(3)
The plasma conductivity is modeled as the straight interpolating line of Fig. 14

(4)

being the conductivity coinciding with the point where

is the dipole current density of
the pump signal is applied.
the radiated signal

(5)
with S(y) being the cross section where current flows with area

(6)
is the plasma column radius and
is the
smallest value between the plasma layer thickness t and the skin
MHz,
.
is the
depth at
antenna current flowing along the dipole axis according to the
is
TWA and is also the problem unknown. Finally,
the magnetic current loop, wrapped around the dipole, placed in
and representing the signal source.
The method of moments (MoM) was applied using pulse
functions as basis functions and the point matching condition;
the use of the proper conductivity for the plasma column leads
us to consider a varying cross section where the current density
flows along the antenna.
A numerical code was developed to solve the EFIE using
MoM. Convergence tests led to the choice of 61 basis and
weighting functions for MoM implementation.
Both copper and plasma antennas were analyzed: in the first
case an ideal conductor was assumed, whereas in the second
case three different conductivity profiles were used. In particular
the straight interpolating lines and the corresponding thickness
of Fig. 14 were used. It is important to remember that these three
profiles derive from the measured input impedance of the loop
placed around the tube.
Table V shows the power balance for a generator
V, and the theoretical efficiency calculated for the three situations. These results highlight that the higher the conductivity is
the greater the radiation is and therefore a better efficiency is
achieved.
mm is
It is clear that the conductivity profile with
the most acceptable because only this value implies a calculated
dB similar to the measured one (
dB).
efficiency

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The results of the entire recovering procedure show that curve

mm of Fig. 14 best describes the antenna conductivity
profile.
We would like to underline that the plasma thickness
: in fact t depends on the power and fredepends on the frequency of the pump signal, whereas
quency of the radiated signal (430 MHz) and plasma conductivity. In this example the skin depth has a minimum value of
2.5 mm at the base of the antenna, therefore it is always greater
than the estimated plasma thickness (0.5 mm).
V. CONCLUSION
Plasma antennas present some potential advantages compared with traditional metallic radiating systems, although a
new approach for their characterization is required. This is
due to the need for generating plasma, the physical support
which allows the signal to be radiated. Even if the literature
concerning plasma physics and application is extensive, very
few papers deal with the specific subject of plasma antennas.
In this context this paper is a step towards the definition of
measurement techniques for the experimental characterization
of this kind of antenna.
Two main problems have been considered and solved: the first
is the presence of two radio frequency signals at the same time
on the same structure; the second is the design of a sensor for
the characterization of the plasma state.
In the former case a suitable measurement set-up was developed to evaluate and reduce the strong coupling between the
pump and the radiated signals in order to prevent instrument
damage and measurement errors; for the latter problem the measurement of the plasma state was complicated because the region where plasma is ignited (a glass tube) is not accessible.
In this situation an indirect measurement procedure was carried
out, involving a self-consistent technique that allows us to retrieve the value of plasma conductivity using experimental data
and simulations.
The complex solution provided for plasma antenna characterization is intrinsic to the physical phenomenon, because all
the parameters strongly depend on each other according to nonlinear relations.
Three important parameters were successfully measured: the
efficiency of the plasma antenna, its length, and the column conductivity. Other parameters were also characterized in order to
obtain the above mentioned quantities: matching conditions for
both the pump signal and the radiated signal, coupling between
the pump and signal networks.
The experimental analysis showed that the surfaguide is an
effective device to excite plasma antennas and is also suitable
for array configurations. At the same time this study underlined
the need not only to have a model to describe the interaction
mechanism between a surface wave and plasma but also to carry
out a parametric investigation of the problem: for this purpose a
numerical tool was developed to help the optimization of all the
parameters involved in plasma antenna design.
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Paola Russo (S98M00) was born in Turin, Italy, in
1969. She received the Ph.D. degree in electronic engineering from the Polytechnic of Bari, Italy, in April
1999.
In 1999, she worked with a research contract at
the Motorola Florida Research Lab. From 2000 to
2004, she worked with a research contract on the development of numerical tools applied to the coupling
of electromagnetic field and biological tissue, and to
different EMC problems, in the Department of Electronics, University of Ancona (now Universit Politecnica delle Marche). Since January 2005, she is a Researcher at the Universit Politecnica delle Marche, Italy, where she teaches EMC and antenna design.
Her main research topics are on the application of numerical modeling to EMC
problem, reverberation chamber, and new antenna design.
Prof. Russo is a member of the IEEE EMC and AP societies and of the Italian
Society of Electromagnetics SIEM.

RUSSO et al.: EXPERIMENTAL CHARACTERIZATION OF A SURFAGUIDE FED PLASMA ANTENNA

Valter Mariani Primiani (M93) was born in Rome,

Italy in 1961. He received the Laurea degree in
electronic engineering in 1990.
Currently, he is an Associate Professor of electromagnetic compatibility at the Universit Politecnica
delle Marche, Ancona, Italy, where he is a member
of the DIBET Department, responsible for the EMC
Laboratory. His area of interest in electromagnetic
compatibility concerns the prediction of digital PCB
radiation, the radiation from apertures, the ESD coupling effects modelling and the analysis of emission
and immunity test methods. More recently he has extended his research activity
in the field of the application of reverberation chambers for compliance testing
and for metrology applications.
Prof. Primiani is a member of the IEEE EMC and IM societies and of the
Italian Society of Electromagnetics SIEM.

Graziano Cerri (M93) was born in Ancona, Italy,

in 1956. He received the Laurea degree in electronic
engineering from the University of Ancona, in 1981.
In 1983, after military service in the Engineer
Corp. of the Italian Air Force, he became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electronics and
Control, University of Ancona where, from 1992,
he was an Associate Professor of microwaves in the
same Department, and is currently a Full Professor
of electromagnetic fields in the DIBET Department,
Universit Politecnica delle Marche. His research is
mainly devoted to EMC problems, to the analysis of the interaction between
EM fields and biological bodies and to antennas.
Prof. Cerri is a member of AEI (Italian Electrotechnical and Electronic Association). Since 2004, he is the Director of ICEmB (Interuniversity Italian Center
for the study of the interactions between Electromagnetic Fields and Biosystems). He is also a Member of the Administrative and Scientific Board of CIRCE
(Interuniversity Italian Research Centre for Electromagnetic Compatibility), the
Scientific Board of CNIT (Interuniversity National Centre for Telecommunications), and the Scientific Board of SIEm (Italian Association of Electromagnetics).

433

Roberto De Leo was born in Bari, Italy, in 1942. He

received the Laurea degree in electronic engineering
from the Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy, in 1965.
From 1966 to 1975, he was an Assistant Professor
of electronics on the Faculty of Engineering, University of Bari, Bari, Italy, where, in 1976, he was appointed Full Professor of Microwaves. In 1980, he
was appointed Full Professor of electromagnetic field
at the University of Ancona, Ancona, Italy, where, in
1992, he became a Full Professor of electromagnetic
compatibility. His scientific interests are devoted to
theoretical and experimental aspects of EMC.
Prof. De Leo was an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility. since 1976, he has been a Member of the Scientific
Council of the Electromagnetic Group of the Italian National Research Council
(CNR), and from 1989 to 1993, he was also the President of this Group. He is
also a member of the Scientific Board of SIEm (Italian Association of Electromagnetics).

Eleonora Vecchioni was born in Macerata, Italy, in

1981. She received the Laurea degree in electronics
engineering and the Ph.D. degree in electromagnetism from the Universit Politecnica delle Marche,
Ancona, Italy, in July 2006 and December 2009,
respectively.
Her research interests include computational
electrodynamics and plasma physics, in particular
the physical and numerical characterization of the
electromagnetic properties plasma. In January 2010,
she was collaborating with the Dipartimento Di
Ingegneria Biomedica, Elettronica e Telecomunicazioni of Univpm, as an
external collaborator and since June 2010, she is working in the Software R&D
Unit, Thermowatt Company.