Experimental Characterization of a Plasma Dipole in the UHF Band

The experimental characterization of a plasma dipole in the ultrahigh frequency band is presented. The antenna consists on two customized plasma sources disposed as the arms of a conventional metallic dipole. The commercial electrodes used to produce the plasma act also as signal coupler. First, the plasma parameters have been measured to compute the electric permittivity. Subsequently, the reflection coefficient and the antenna gain have been derived through computer simulations and measurements in a portion of the spectrum centered at 0.435 GHz.