Plasma Antennas in the Microwave Regime

Plasma antennas exploit partially or fully ionized gas to transmit and receive electromagnetic waves, in contrast with conventional antennas that are only made by metal and dielectric materials. These antennas are characterized by key properties that cannot be found in conventional antennas: they can be reconfigured electrically by changing the plasma discharge parameters (e.g., density), on time scales the order of microseconds or milliseconds. The vast majority of the works that can be found in literature focus on plasma antennas operating in the VHF band (30-300 MHZ), while few studies have been conducted on plasma antennas working at higher frequencies. We have analyzed the main issues related to the realization of plasma antennas in the MW frequency range. Early experimental results about a plasma dipole resonating at 900MHz will be presented.