Radiation of High-power Ultrawideband Pulses with Elliptical Polarization by a Conical Helical Antenna

Abstract

A high-power source of ultrawideband radiation with elliptical polarization was developed on the basis of exciting a conical helical antenna by a bipolar voltage pulse with a length of 1 ns. The antenna parameters were preliminarily estimated using analytical formulas and then optimized via numerical simulation. The results of low-voltage test measurements were compared with the data that were obtained using a program that was developed on the basis of the finite-difference method in the time domain. In high-voltage measurements, the energy efficiency of the radiator was 0.85 and the coefficient of the hodograph ellipticity measured along the antenna axis was 0.9. The effective radiation potential of the source at an amplitude of bipolar voltage pulses of 190 kV was 270 kV, while the efficiency with respect to the peak field strength was 1.35. The high-power source of ultrawideband radiation operated at a pulse repetition frequency of 100 Hz.