Design and development of plasma antenna for wi-fi application

Abstract

The term plasma is often referred to as the fourth state of matter. When sufficient ionized, plasma can be a conductor element. Plasma antenna is a type of radio antenna that represents the use of ionized gas as a conducting medium instead of metal conductors. The main objective in this research is to design plasma antenna at 2.4 GHz by using commercial fluorescent tube. In this work the commercial fluorescent lamp was chosen because it was low cost to produce plasma element. The plasma antenna in this research was made from fluorescent lamp that functioned as a radiating element with target frequency at 2.4 GHz for Wi-Fi application. The commercial fluorescent lamp consisted of argon gas and mercury vapor with a diameter of 28 mm and a length 589.8 mm. The result showed that a fluorescent tube, can be used to work as a plasma antenna for Wi-Fi application.

Keywords: plasma antenna; plasma element; coupling sleeve; Wi-fi application