Physical Meaning of the Dipole Radiation Resistance in Lossless and Lossy Media: What is the Radiation Resistance of Antennas in Lossy Media?

In this tutorial, we discuss the radiation from a Hertzian dipole into uniform isotropic lossy media of infinite extent. If the medium is lossless, the radiated power propagates to infinity, and the apparent dissipation is measured by the radiation resistance of the dipole. If the medium is lossy, the power exponentially decays, and the physical meaning of radiation resistance needs clarification. Here, we present explicit calculations of the power absorbed in the infinite lossy host space and discuss the limit of zero losses. We show that the input impedance of dipole antennas contains a radiation-resistance contribution that does not depend on the imaginary part of the refractive index. This means that the power delivered by dipole antennas to surrounding space always contains a contribution from far fields unless the real part of the refractive index is zero. Based on this understanding, we discuss the fundamental limitations of power coupling between two antennas and possibilities of removing the limit imposed by radiation damping.