This one day class is geared as an introduction into basic antenna and antenna array concepts. The material is basic and should be familiar to an engineer working on any system involving transmitted electromagnetic waves (e.g., radar, satellite communication, terrestrial communications, etc.)

The course is roughly broken into four components: Basic antenna concepts, Basic antenna array concepts, and an overview of antenna simulation tools (software) and antenna measurements.

Instructor:

Dr. Steven Weiss is a senior design engineer with the Army Research Lab in Adelphi, MD. He has a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the Rochester Institute of Technology with Master's and Doctoral Degrees from The George Washington University. He has numerous publications in the IEEE on antenna theory. He teaches both introductory and advanced, graduate level courses at Johns Hopkins University on antenna systems. He is active in the IEEE and is presently on the steering committee for the Antennas and Propagation Conference for 2005. In his job at the Army Research Lab, he is actively involved with all stages of antenna development from initial design, to first prototype, to measurements. He is a licensed Professional Engineer in both Maryland and Delaware.

Contact this instructor (please mention course name in the subject line)

What You Will Learn:

At the conclusion of the course, the student should understand various antenna concepts and practical engineering tradeoffs and should be more familiar with the terminology used when discussing antenna systems.

Course Outline:

1. Basic antenna concepts
   • Definition of the antenna.
   • Definition of antenna directivity and distinction between gain and
   • directivity.
   • Discussion of beamwidth and sidelobes.
   • Various definitions of antenna bandwidth and system connectivity issues.
   • Discussion of polarization: linear, circular, elliptical.
   • Discussion of aperture size and its impact on beamwidth.
   • Overview of commercially available antennas: dipole, horn, spiral,
   • biconical, patch, and various other popular antennas.
   • The Friis transmission formula is introduced and a detailed example given.

2. Basic antenna array concepts
   • Discussion of the array and the concepts of pattern multiplication.
   • Explanation of phasing an array to cause the beam to scan.
   • Impact of amplitude distributions on the shape of the beam and on sidelobe levels.
   • Concept of grating lobes and how to circumvent them.
   • Explanation of "beam squint" and the distinction between constant phase versus time delay phase shifters.
   • Discussion of mutual coupling and possible adverse effects (e.g., scan blindness)

3. Software simulation concepts
   • Discussion and distinction between: Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD), the method of moments (MoM), and the Finite Element Method (FEM.)
   • Some commercial codes that use these techniques.

4. Antenna measurements
   • Explanation of the importance of an anechoic chamber.
   • Measuring the E- and H- planes.
   • Gain and directivity measurements.
   • Polarization measurements.

Tuition:

Tuition for this one-day course is $600 per person at one of our scheduled public courses. Onsite pricing is available. Please call us at 410-956-8805 or send an email to ati@ATIcourses.com.

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