[Antennaware] Two Boston-area talks about antennas, 5/13/09

[Andy]

This coming Wednesday, 13 May 09, there are two IEEE-sponsored presentations related to antennas in the Boston, MA (USA) area:


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"The Plasma Antenna - Now you see it, now you don't"
Dr. Igor Alexeff, Professor Emeritus, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Distinguished Lecturer, NPSS Society
Our plasma antenna is a fluorescent lamp from the local hardware store. When on, it receives ordinary FM and AM signals. When off, it electrically disappears and becomes invisible to RADAR. Our work on plasma antennas has been supported by two phase 2 SBIR grants from the US Air Force and the US Army. We have made many significant advances in theory and practice, the most important of which is that a plasma antenna under the proper operating conditions has much lower thermal noise than metal antennas in the same operating frequency range. We have constructed an intelligent plasma antenna, which searches in azimuth for a desired signal. When a desired signal is found, the plasma antenna locks onto the desired signal, ignoring signals arriving at other azimuthal angles. When the desired signal disappears, the intelligent plasma antenna recommences scanning (movie). 
Professor Alexeff graduated from Harvard in physics in 1952, and received his PhD degree from the University of Wisconsin in nuclear physics in 1959. He also passed the Tennessee State License Exam, and is a registered professional engineer. He has worked at the Westinghouse Research Laboratory on nuclear submarines, at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in controlled thermonuclear fusion, and at the University of Tennessee in industrial plasma engineering. He has worked overseas for extended periods in Switzerland, Japan, India, South Africa, and Brazil. He has done considerable work for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and was a co – founder of the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society. He was president of that society in 1999 – 2000. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and of The American Physical Society. He has over 100 refereed publications, 19 issued patents and published a book.

He has spent considerable time recently on plasma stealth antennas, and is listed on several patents issued to the ASI Technology Corporation.

This meeting is sponsored by the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society Distinguished Lecturers Program and IEEE North Shore Subsection.  Meeting time will be Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 at 6:30 PM at the University Massachusetts Lowell, Lowell, MA 01854, Ball 412.  Refreshments will be served at 6:30 PM and the talk will begin at 7:00 PM.  Following the lecture there will be a no host dinner held at a local restaurant.

Directions: To UMass Lowell North Campus from the Lowell Connector: From the Connector, take Exit 5B onto Thorndike St. After four traffic lights (1/2 mile), Thorndike St. bears right and becomes Dutton St. Continue on Dutton St. about 1/2 mile to Merrimack Street by City Hall. Proceed straight onto Arcand Drive. At the end of Arcand Drive, the Tsongas Arena is straight ahead. Turn left at the traffic light onto Morissette Blvd. Wannalancit Mills is one block on the right. Proceed to the second light at Aiken Street. UML East, Lelacheur Ball Park and the Campus Recreation Center are on the right. On Morissette Blvd., continue to the third light and turn right onto the University Ave Bridge. Once across the bridge, UMass Lowell North is on either side of the road.

All are welcome to attend the meeting and if you're planning to attend please call or contact:  Prof. Dikshitulu Kalluri (978) 934-3318 or dikshitulu_kalluri at uml.edu or Constantine Taki Markos (781) 883-0179 or ctm at ieee.org




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The other talk is partly about MoM, or Method of Moments, which is the technique used in NEC (EZNEC, etc.) for simulating antennas:

"MoM and FDTD electromagnetic modeling in MATLAB"
Sergey N. Makarov
This talk discusses results and challenges of antenna and electromagnetic modeling in MATLAB including the 3D MoM solver and a 2D FDTD solver. The MoM solver requires two external LAPACK subroutines to be compiled in MATLAB. The problems to be considered:

  1.. Small antennas (MoM) 

  2.. Antenna to antenna link (MoM) 

  3.. Patch antenna (MoM) 

  4.. Antenna array (MoM) 

  5.. Indoor propagation (FDTD) 

In every case (except for #5), we compare the MATLAB MoM performance with the performance of the commercial package Ansoft HFSS with regard to its execution speed and accuracy. The freeware MATLAB 64bit solvers discussed in this talk have been written by graduate students of the Antenna Lab in the ECE Department at WPI.

Sergey N. Makarov (M'98-SM'06) earned his B.S./M.S./Ph.D./Dr. Sci. degrees at the St. Petersburg (Leningrad) State University, Russian Federation - Department of Mathematics and Mechanics where he became a professor in 1996 - the youngest full professor of the Faculty. In 2000 he joined the Faculty in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, MA where he became a full professor and director of the Center for Electromagnetic Modeling and Design at WPI in 2008. His current research interests include practical antenna design, computational and analytical electromagnetics, and educational aspects of electromagnetics and wireless power transfer.

The meeting will be held at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory Cafeteria in Lexington, MA.  Refreshments will be served at 5:30; the talk will begin at 6:00 pm. The talk is open to the general public.

Directions to Lincoln Laboratory Cafeteria from points north: Take I-95/128 south to exit 31B, Routes 4 & 225 towards Bedford. Stay in right lane and use the right turning lane (0.3 miles) to access Hartwell Ave at first traffic light. Follow Hartwell Ave to the end; take a left onto Wood Street (just before the AFB gate). Lincoln Laboratory entrance is 0.5 miles on right. The entrance to the cafeteria is on the lower level left of the main entrance.

>From points south: Take I-95/128 north to exit 30B, Route 2A west.  Turn right on to Mass Ave (~0.4 miles).  Turn left on to Wood Street (~0.4 miles) Lincoln Laboratory Wood Street entrance is 1 mile on left.  The entrance to the cafeteria is on the lower level to the left of the main entrance.

For more information contact John Sandora ( jsandora at ll.mit.edu ).