Study on Radar Cross Section for the Plasma Antenna in UHF Band

Plasma antennas are expected to decrease mutual interference and radar cross section (RCS) in close antennas. Additionally, these antennas are insensitive to radiation and have noise immunity compared with semiconductor devises. In this paper, a monopole-antenna at 300MHz of UHF-band was designed and fabricated by injecting Ar-Hg gas into a folded tube to excite the plasma. Results show that the measured gain and efficiency of plasma antenna obtained −2.97dBi and −6.85dB respectively, at 11.4 GHz as a plasma frequency. Characteristics of RCS was analyzed by measurement and simulation. The switched-off plasma antenna achieved a decrease of −7dB in RCS at 5GHz in comparison with switched-on plasma.