E&C ENGR 412: Foundations of Antenna Engineering

Course Description

Students will review Maxwell’s equations then study poynting vector, boundary conditions, duality principle, image theory, radiation from current sources, vector potentials, and TE-TM decomposition of fields. Students will be able to use free-space Green’s functions, radiation patterns, gain, directivity and impedance concepts, equivalence principle, polarization concepts – Ludwig’s 3rd definitions, and the cavity model theory of microstrip patch and slot antennas. Students will also learn dipole radiation, homogeneous and inhomogeneous plane wave propagation, surface and Zenneck waves at interfaces, fundamental limits on antenna size, gain and bandwidth (D/Q) ratio, array synthesis – Dolph-Chebyshev and Taylor synthesis, and mutual coupling analysis. RF CAD softwares will be used – FEKO and CST.