Beam Pattern for a Single Slot Antenna

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Beam Pattern for a Single Slot Antenna

• Larry Isenhower
• Summer 2002

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What exactly am I doing?

• At first I was writing LabView programs to talk
  with many different instruments in the lab to get
  their information onto a computer.

• Then I began to make measurements on a scale
  model single slot planar antenna to make a far
  field beam pattern to help test simulations that
  have been made for the actual antenna.

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What will the antenna be used for?

• The antenna I am mapping is a scale model for a
  possible antenna that may be used to study the
  Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)

• This new antenna will be sensitive to the
  polarization of the CMB and will be smaller than
  existing antennas.

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What is the CMB?

• It is the oldest light in the universe.
• The CMB allows astronomers to find many
  fundamental parameters.
• This is the CMB power spectrum obtained from
  current data.

From Max Tegmarks webpage
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The antenna

• First I needed to verify that our antenna
  resonated at the correct frequency that we had
  predicted.

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Far field setup
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Far Field beam map

• After having verified that the antenna really did
  resonate at the predicted frequency I moved on to
  make a Far Field beam map.

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Still more about the antenna

• We also had a lens made for the antenna. The
  main peak occurs at 30 degrees because of the
  slot being off center, but we dont know what is
  causing the asymmetry.

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Where I stand now

• I have finished mapping the single slot antenna.
• The next step is to figure out the problem with
  our lens.
• Then we would get a scale model of the actual
  antenna that we will be using in our experiments
  and test that.