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A finite element simulation model of terahertz wave propagation in plasma is developed. The equivalence of treating the plasma as a dielectric and an electrical conductor is studied in comparison. The propagation characteristics of terahertz waves in a unmagnetized plasma obtained from experimental measurements or simulations are simulated by interpolating the distribution of key parameters such as electron density and collision frequency of the external plasma. The validity of this open simulation model is verified by using the simulation data of plasma electron density generated by the independent electrochemical plasma generation model as external data. Using this model as a research tool, the propagation characteristics of terahertz waves in plasma measured by laser Thomson scattering are studied. The simulation results of the terahertz wave propagation characteristics in the plasma with and without considering the collision frequency are compared by this model. The terahertz transmission model in plasma can be used to study the propagation characteristics of terahertz waves in various inhomogeneous plasmas, which would be helpful to solve the communication "blackout" problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radar is a crucial tool for remote sensing and monitoring of marine environments. However, its effectiveness is significantly influenced by sea clutter. The complex interplay between radar parameters and various maritime environmental factors gives rise to a dynamic and intricate sea clutter pattern. The conventional approach to sea clutter prediction only considers the temporal dependence, neglecting the spatial changes. To address this limitation, this study proposes the Fusion of Fourier Transform and Graph Neural Network (FFTaGNN) to enhance the accuracy of multi-dimensional sea clutter data forecasting. FFTaGNN captures the correlations and time dependencies among sequences in the spectral domain. By combining the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) and graph Fourier transform (GFT), it extracts the temporal correlation characteristics and establishes correlations between multidimensional sea clutter data sequences. Importantly, FFTaGNN can automatically discover data correlations between sequences without relying on predetermined priors. To validate the effectiveness of the model, an experimental verification process is conducted, considering different grazing angles and sea clutter High Range Resolution Profile (HRRP) data. The results of the experiment demonstrate that the proposed strategy achieves a minimum Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of 0.0574 in predicting sea clutter HRRP data. This technique holds great potential in effectively suppressing sea clutter, thereby enhancing the overall performance of radar systems in marine environments and small target detection capabilities at the sea surface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fast construction of the 3-D scattering centers of ship targets on the sea surface is important for many radar applications, including the fast signature prediction, feature extraction, and automatic recognition of targets. Combining the “four-path” model for target-surface coupling scattering with modified Fresnel reflection coefficient model in the stochastic sea surface and ray tube integration method, we propose a 3-D image formation method for ship-surface compound targets. Using the CLEAN technique on 3-D image, we develop a fast algorithm for establishing 3-D scattering center model for ship targets on the sea surface. Because this algorithm realizes 3D imaging of targets at a single frequency and single aspect angle, and adopts simplified surface model to avoid the need to construct a large number of surface elements, the computational efficiency of the proposed alogrithm is greatly increased to meet the needs of practical engineering applications. Simulation experiments of a typical ship target show that the proposed algorithm can increase the speed by four orders of magnitude under typical conditions, as compared with the traditional FFT-based 3D imaging method. We validate the accuracy of this algorithm by comparing reconstructed 1-D range profiles and ISAR images obtain by the scattering center model with the ones that are directly simulated.

Classification of drones is important due to their increasing popularity and potential threats. The micro-Doppler signatures that depend on the rotation of rotor blades facilitate the classification of drones. To enhance the robustness of micro-Doppler based classification of drones, dual radar sensing classification scheme is proposed in this paper. First, time-frequency spectrograms are obtained by performing a short-time Fourier transform on the radar data collected by two radar sensors that have similar angular diversity. Then, principal components analysis is utilized to extract the features from the time-frequency spectrograms and the features obtained by the two radar sensors are fused together. Finally, the classification results are obtained by using the support vector machine. The experimental results show that the classification accuracy obtained by the fusion of dual radar sensors is 5% higher than that obtained by only using a single radar sensor.

The phonon dispersion spectrum, eigenvector, and lattice vibration frequency of cadmium telluride with a zinc blende structure have been investigated using the density functional theory, and the permittivity of cadmium telluride crystal is numerically calculated. The permittivity of the crystal is measured using the terahertz time-domain spectroscopy system. The experimental results are consistent with the theoretical calculations on the modified local density approximation, the general gradient approximation, and the modified general gradient approximation. Finally, the differences among the three approximate exchange correlation potentials indicate that in the terahertz region, the permittivity of cadmium telluride is dominantly contributed by the coupling between electron and phonon; however, the phonon frequencies of transverse wave and longitudinal wave were sensitive to electron density distribution.

The measurement system has been built with Stepped Frequency Continuous Wave (SFCW) signal for Radar Cross Section (RCS) measurements in free-space at 220～330 GHz. The system consists of vector network analyzer, Millimeter-Wave Converters and target support structure. The measurement techniques which are used in scattering measurements are verified by RCS measurement data. The system measurement accuracy is control within about ±3 dB at –23.6 dBsm.

High-order spoof surface plasmon (SSP) mode on corrugated metallic surfaces can find many interesting applications, such as in imaging, sensing, transmission and enhanced radiation source, etc. In this paper, an efficient excitation method of the high-order SSP mode by using an injected electron beam on the uniform rectangular metallic grating is proposed and investigated numerically. Based on the matched wave momentum between the SSP mode and the electron beam, both the fundamental and high-order SSP modes can be excited on the structure by using a single injected electron beam. Numerical simulation results indicate that the maximum electric field intensity of the generated high-order SSP mode is about two orders higher than that of the fundamental SSP mode. In addition, the peak power of the excited high-order SSP mode is almost two times that of the fundamental SSP mode power by the same energy electron beam, which demonstrates the obvious advantage of the high-order SSP electronic excitation approach compared to the previous fundamental SSP mode excitation on the structure. The central working frequency of high-order SSP power spectrum is about three times that of the fundamental SSP power spectrum. Moreover, the influences of the injected electron beam energy on the excited SSP power spectrum are analyzed specifically. It is shown that the generated SSP power spectrum demonstrates a blue shift with the decreased working voltage of the electron beam simultaneously, with its peak power increasing. However, the working bandwidth is narrowed with decreased beam voltage, which further reveals its working mechanism of presented electronic excitation of the SSP mode. The presented studies provide a new method to excite a high-order SSP mode on the metallic grating, which can find some potential applications in high-sensitivity sensing, deep sub-wavelength waveguide, and many others in terahertz spectra. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) is one of the most difficult problems in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data interpretation. In recent years, the model-based SAR target recognition method has attracted much attention because of its good performance in the extended operation condition. Based on the research of a few domestic research institutes, this paper briefly introduces the preliminary research results and gives some thoughts about SAR ATR problem. First of all, the development of parametric scattering model are discussed from three aspects. Next, two ways to model the parametric electromagnetic scattering for complex target are put forward. Finally, we propose a new framework for a Three-Dimensional (3D) parametric scattering model based SAR ATR. In the end, the future research direction of model-based SAR target recognition is prospected.

Knowledge of target polarization characteristics is valuable for radar target detection, classification, and identification. We conducted experimental research on an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) with complex materials and structures to determine the differences in polarimetric scattering between the UAV and its perfect electric conductor model. To illustrate the coherence of the entire UAV and its components using polarimetric scattering, we measured and analyzed each part. The results reveal that the airframe and aerofoils directly influence the depolarization, and that the polarimetric scattering characteristics of the airframe represent the primary source for the whole UAV.

When the hypersonic vehicle is flying, the plasma in the area near the stagnation point of the front end of the vehicle can be approximately seen as the fully ionized dusty plasma. Due to the existence of dust particles, dusty plasma affects the communication quality of the hypersonic vehicle. In this paper, the general Boltzmann equation applicable to dusty plasmas containing electrons and the Fokker–Planck–Landau collision model are combined to derive a general formula for the electron distribution function of fully ionized dusty plasmas. Considering the contribution of the collision effect and charging effect to the dispersion relationship of fully ionized dusty plasma, the dielectric constant of fully ionized dusty plasma under an external magnetic field is solved. The Wentzel–Kramers–Brillouin method is used to calculate the attenuation coefficient (α) of the THz wave in fully ionized dusty plasma, and the influence of the external magnetic field strength and other dusty plasma parameters on the attenuation characteristics of the THz circularly polarized wave is analyzed. The research results show that the α of the THz left-hand circularly polarized wave decreases with the increase in the external magnetic field strength, while the α of the THz right-hand circularly polarized wave increases. In addition, increasing the dust particle radius, dust particle density, and electron density in a certain frequency range can increase the α of the THz circularly polarized waves. These research results provide theoretical guidance for the exploration of the interaction mechanism between the THz waves and fully ionized dusty plasma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A terahertz flexible metamaterial quarter-wave plate (QWP) is designed and fabricated using polyimide as the substrate in this paper, with a 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth of 0.51 THz and high polarization conversion efficiency and transmittance. The effect of the incidence angle on the polarization conversion performance of the QWP is discussed by measuring the transmissions at multiple incidence angles. The blocking effect of this QWP combined with a polarizer on the backward reflection of terahertz waves is investigated by terahertz time-domain spectral transmission experiments. By adjusting the angle of the QWP and polarizer with respect to the incident light in the optical path, a blocking efficiency of 20 dB can be achieved at a 20° incidence angle, with a bandwidth of 0.25 THz, a maximum blocking efficiency of 58 dB at 1.73 THz, and an insertion loss of only 1.4 dB. Flexible terahertz metamaterial QWPs and polarizers can effectively block harmful reflected waves in terahertz communication and other systems. They have the advantages of a simple structure, ultra-thinness and flexibility, easy integration, no external magnetic field, and no low-temperature and other environmental requirements, thus having broad application prospects for terahertz on-chip integrated systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many radar applications, such as system design and testing and target detection and recognition, need to compress and rapidly reconstruct the target-scattering characteristics data through some suitable sparse representations, while the scattering center (SC) model resulting from different scattering mechanisms is just a prospective candidate. For the target scattering characteristics data with single reflection/diffraction mechanisms, the multimanifold structures of wide-angle SCs were revealed in light of asymptotic high-frequency theory and ray theory of electromagnetic field. Then the multimanifold clustering and curve/surface fitting algorithms are introduced to construct the target global SC (GSC) model. Compared with simulation data of sphere-cone target, the RCS at elevation 90 ° , azimuth 0 – 180 ° can be accurately reconstructed by only 77 parameters, the compress rate and root mean square error are 0.66 and 1.17 dB respectively. Simulation results showed that the GSC model could greatly compress the wide-angle scattering data while ensuring a suitable reconstruction accuracy. The proposed multimanifold GSC representation is convenient to implement and can effectively replace the redundant original scattering characteristics data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A symmetry relation of the integral operators in a layered medium proved by the reciprocal theory can be applied to improve the accuracy of the magnetic-field integral equation (MFIE). Based on the symmetric layered medium Green’s function, the normal vector can be transferred into the inner integral to keep the field integral as the inner integral of the elements in the impedance matrix. When discretized by the divergence-conforming function, this field-extracted scheme shows better performance than the classic expression in accuracy. Meanwhile, this form of expression can be applied in the combined-field integral equation (CFIE). Several numerical results are provided to validate the formulation of the symmetry relations from the layered medium Green’s function to the impedance matrices and to reveal its advantages in enhancing the accuracy of the field-extracted form of MFIE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, an ultrawideband radar scattering cross-sectional (RCS) reduction metasurface is proposed combining with absorption and phase cancellation mechanisms. A two-lossy-layer absorber is designed first, which is responsible for low-frequency RCS reduction from 1.3 to 13 GHz (163.6%). The equivalent circuit of the proposed absorber is extracted, proving that the wideband characteristic is due to the occurrence of multiple resonant points. To further improve the RCS reduction bandwidth, the absorber unit cells are arranged with three different heights. The proposed metasurface consists of 3 $\times $ 3 lattice and each lattice has $5\times $ 5 absorber unit cells. The reflection phase cancellation can be achieved owing to the wave path difference by introducing a certain height difference among subregions. Resultantly, high-frequency RCS reduction from 13 to 40 GHz can be realized since the backward scattering can be canceled effectively. Finally, an extraordinary ultrawideband RCS reduction from 1.5 to 40 GHz (185.5%) can be acquired successfully. A prototype with the thickness of 0.104 $\lambda _{L}$ (the wavelength of the lowest working frequency) is fabricated and measured for demonstration. The measured results prove that the proposed design has numerous advantages including minimization, ultrawideband RCS reduction, wide angle stability, and polarization insensitivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a low-profile, double-layer absorber with ultra-broadband absorption and large-angle stability is proposed. In order to improve the angular stability, the square ring with concave–convex deformation is designed. It can expand the current path to realize the miniaturization of the absorber, which decreases the influence of oblique incident on absorption. The equivalent circuit model provides detailed resonance and admittance analysis, showing the existence of three resonances working together to achieve broadband absorption. The simulated results illustrate that the designed unit can achieve above 80% absorption within 2.09–18.1 GHz. The angular stability is up to 50° under TE/TM polarization with a period of 0.07 λL (the wavelength of the lowest operating frequency). The 300 mm × 300 mm prototype absorbers were fabricated for demonstration, with a total thickness of 0.096 λL. The measurement results are consistent with the simulated results, which shows that the designed absorber unit can achieve ultra-broadband and large-angle absorption. The performance of devices can be widely applied in infrared detection, radiation refrigeration, and stealth technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) on the graphene metasurfaces (GSPs) are crucial to develop a series of novel functional devices that can merge the well-established plasmonics and novel nanomaterials. Dispersion theory on GSPs is an important aspect, which can provide a basic understanding of propagating waves and further guidance for potential applications based on graphene metamaterials. In this paper, the dispersion theory and its modal characteristics of GSPs on double-layer graphene metasurfaces consisting of the same upper and lower graphene micro-ribbon arrays deposited on the dielectric medium are presented. In order to obtain its dispersion expressions of GSP mode on the structure, an analytical approach is provided by directly solving the Maxwell's equations in each region and then applying periodical conductivity boundary onto the double interfaces. The obtained dispersion expressions show that GSPs split into two newly symmetric and antisymmetric modes compared to that on the single graphene metasurface. Further, the resultant dispersion relation and its propagating properties as a function of some important physical parameters, such as spacer, ribbon width, and substrate, are treated and investigated in the Terahertz band, signifying great potentials in constructing various novel graphene-based plasmonic devices, such as deeply sub-wavelength waveguides, lenses, sensors, emitters, etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The traditional time‐frequency analysis (TFA) techniques are instruments for target classification, which can reflect the feature of the target in the time‐frequency domain. However, it will lead to a serious decrease in the recognition accuracy as the decline of the sampling rate. To ease this problem, in this article, the sparse time‐frequency feature analysis (STFFA) is implemented for aircraft classification, and the genetic algorithm is adopted to solve the sparse problem quickly for saving time. Firstly, the sparse time‐frequency decomposition and recovery signal are obtained by matching pursuit. Then, three novel kinds of aircraft features are extracted from the sparse time‐frequency decomposition, which are sparse recovery time‐frequency entropy (SRTFE), frequency entropy by time, and first‐order sparse time‐frequency moment. Thus, the feature combination modes based on the three features are applied to realize the classification of aircraft and compared with the traditional TFA techniques. Besides, a support vector machine is also used to classify the three kinds of aircraft. The accuracy and efficiency of the STFFA method have been investigated by employing the parametric model data and electromagnetic scattering model simulated trials. Furthermore, in contrast to the traditional TFA instrument, our method can reach a recognition accuracy of more than 90% from the numerical experiment results, which demonstrates that the feature extraction by sparse time‐frequency analysis improves the accuracy of aircraft classification under a low sampling rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the bandwidth limit of radar cross-section (RCS) reduction (RCSR) and proposes a new strategy for realizing multiband and ultrawideband RCSR. The high-frequency bound is broken while guaranteeing the stability of the low frequency and is extended to the grating-lobe appearance region. The short circuit blind zone of RCSR was first discovered in structures, such as the metasurface, frequency-selective surface (FSS), artificial magnetic conductor (AMC), and electromagnetic (EM) bandgap (EBG), through analyzing the equivalent circuit model and the reflection phase of the unit cell. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper deals with a new efficient shooting and bouncing ray (SBR) method based on OptiX and normal vectors correction. The basic idea is to make full use of the computing resources of the RTX series graphics cards. For ray tracing, the algorithm uses OptiX to invoke the built-in RT Cores of hardware. Thus, a fast intersection test can be implemented. To reduce the error of ray tracing caused by the facetted surface characterizing the curved surface, the direction of the reflected ray is corrected by normal vectors correction. Additionally, multiple GPU cores are invoked to accelerate the calculation of far-field integration of millions of ray tubes, which can improve the efficiency of the algorithm while reducing the data transmission time of heterogeneous devices. Simulation results show that the ray path after normal vectors correction is consistent with the theoretical results, and the algorithm can predict the RCS of arbitrary facetted geometries, which is 60 times faster than the SBR method based on kd-tree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spoof surface plasmons (SSP) on the corrugated metal surfaces have been widely studied over the past decade in both microwave and Terahertz (THz) band. Previous studies show that SSP mode on the metal grating suffers from high dissipative losses in high THz band especially near asymptotic frequency which may limit its real applications. The issue can be addressed by utilizing long-range SSP mode (LRSSP). LRSSP is a special low-loss symmetric propagating surface wave mode along double-layer corrugated metallic waveguides. In this paper, the asymmetric double metal gratings are proposed to support LRSSP which can significantly reduce the damping losses of the other short-range SSP mode (SRSSP) on the conventional doubly-corrugated metallic surfaces, thus enabling new possibilities to utilizing this SRSSP mode within long-range manner. According to our dispersion theory and the numerical calculations, the propagation loss of LRSSP is still lower than that of SRSSP within asymmetric regime, which demonstrates good tolerance to the asymmetry of the double-layer corrugated structure. However, its long-range propagation superiority of LRSSP vanishes gradually as the degree of asymmetry is enlarged. This work provides an alternative approach to increase the propagation length of SRSSP mode on the doubly-corrugated metallic surfaces and can open up new avenues to develop some novel LRSSP-based plasmonic devices such as waveguides, filters, sensors and active powerful radiation sources induced by energy beam below optical spectrum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the working mechanism of a wideband absorber designed with an adjustable and highly selective notch band is studied, in which the narrow notch band is independently controlled by the lower lossless layer of the absorber, whereas the upper lossy layer loaded with lumped resistors realizes absorption. We present two instances with geometrically controlled and electrically controlled notch bands, respectively. Without decreasing absorption performance, the notch position can be flexibly adjusted throughout the entire frequency band by simply modifying the dimension of the lossless frequency-selective surface (FSS) or changing the capacitance of the varactor, i.e., using geometric control or electrical control. The narrow notch band allows two wide absorption bands to be retained on both sides; therefore, good stealth performance is still guaranteed. Equivalent circuit models (ECMs) are proposed to further explain the principle. The frequency-domain simulation, ECM, time-domain simulation, and experimental results are in good agreement and validate the adjustability and high selectivity of the notched absorbers. At the end of this article, an FSA-backed monopole antenna is simulated and measured, which clearly illustrates that these FSAs can serve as the ground plane for antennas and realize out-of-band RCS reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the famous Sommerfeld integrals (SIs) have been revisited by assuming that the approximation of $\gamma _{0}\approx {\mathrm{ i}}\lambda $ is valid for the near-field propagation of low frequencies over a plane conducting ground. A deduction from that is proposed and adopted in the present study, which is defined by $|\gamma _{0}\gamma _{1}|\gg k_{0}^{2}$ , extending to cover a magnetic dipole source in air-to-undersea communications. The focus is on deriving complete and effective solutions in air and seawater regions under the cylindrical coordinates for the electromagnetic near-field, which is generated by a vertical magnetic dipole above sea surface. The resulting formulas can be given by a few summands in closed form as the well-known Fourier–Bessel integrals. It is believed to go a step further by relaxing the reliance on various distance conditions and replacing the integrands by simple, exact integrated terms which are usable at the frequencies of interest for any distance from the source. Computations and discussions are carried out by comparing with related works and late experiments, including the field components and Poynting vectors. It is verified that the derived formulas can be degenerated into some simplified forms which are in accord with those obtained by a “quasi-static” treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, an automatic and forward method is realized to establish attributed scattering center models directly from the computer-aided design (CAD) model of the complex target. The main steps include the preprocessing of the CAD model, the separation of scattering sources, the selection of strong scattering sources, and the automatic determination of model parameters. With the proposed method, the scattering sources, scattering mechanisms, and model parameters of the scattering centers can be identified and derived, such that the complicated manual intervention is completely avoided. Moreover, the method establishes the distributed scattering center models formed by curved surfaces with large curvature radii. Therefore, the formation mechanism of the distributed scattering center is extended from typical scattering structures to a general case. Thus, the model of the attributed scattering center is extended and can be applied to describe the scattering from the real structures of the complex target. The geometric shape of the scattering source is distinguished based on the principal curvature radii, which are calculated by differential geometry theory. Thus, the frequency dependence parameter is obtained according to its corresponding relationship with the geometric shape. In addition, based on the automatic method, a technology is studied to diagnose and correct the scattering center models of a target whose CAD model is unknown or partially known. Finally, parametric models of several targets in the Moving and Stationary Target Acquisition Recognition (MSTAR) program are established, and then compared with the measured data. The results validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In radar detection for micro‐drones, the performance of the characteristics and features of micro‐drones distinctly varies depending on their motion states. Therefore, this study presents an extraction method for spectral signatures of radar cross section (RCS) to classify and discriminate between typical motion states of micro‐drones. The features related to the RCS of the micro‐drones are transformed and converted into a modified Mel frequency cepstral coefficient (MFCC), which is proposed to detailedly characterize the spectral change of RCS along with different movements. Then the hidden Markov model (HMM) is used to recognize the typical movements of micro‐drones based on the modified MFCC. Experiments in X, Ku bands and HH, VV polarization modes are conducted to investigate the effectiveness of the proposed method, and the classification results with average accuracy above 97%$\%$ are also demonstrated in experiments in discriminating between five different motion scenarios of micro‐drone. The works involved will aid in maximizing classification accuracy for micro‐drones in real scenarios and subsequent situation awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SSPPs) structure can be used as a sensor in THz region for the biosensing. The accuracy of resonance and amplitude for sensor is very important for biosensing. The momentum matching of SSPPs determines the resonance position and the gap distance determines the amplitude. For the biomolecular sensing, the sample is positioned between the prism base and the SSPPs structure. The momentum matching condition at the current study does not consider the effect of sample refractive index and the resonance position has a significant error. Here the correction is made to the momentum matching condition which considers the effect of the sample refractive index. A comparative study of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensing performance based on frequency and angle variations shows that the sensing sensitivity for frequency region is superior to that of angle region; in the meanwhile, as an application of biosensors, we have detected different types of brain lesions in the frequency range. Furthermore, the reflection amplitude is related to gap size between the prism and SSPPs. The relationship of gap size and reflection amplitude is studied. By using the relationship between gap size and reflection amplitude, the amplitudes at different frequencies or incident angles for different refractivities have the same reflection dips compared to the other published results. The simulation is performed and the results proved the theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, an algorithm named the sparse Wigner‐Ville distribution (WVD) is applied for the time‐frequency analysis of signals. In this algorithm, the sampling for ambiguity function (AF) is regarded as a sparsity measurement of the WVD, and the Fourier transform matrix is treated as a sparsity redundant dictionary. The effectiveness of the algorithm is verified by using the liner frequency modulation and sinusoidal frequency modulation signals. Then the algorithm is employed to deal with the time‐frequency analysis of helicopters. The experiment results show that the time‐frequency images of helicopters obtained by utilizing this algorithm exhibit higher resolution without cross‐interference terms compared with that by WVD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a novel planar microwave retroreflector based on a transmissive gradient metasurface combined with a curved metal mirror is proposed and demonstrated. The transmissive metasurface can efficiently converge a wide-angle incident wave to a pre-designed curved metal mirror behind it with a proper distance, which acts as an effective reflective surface that can greatly enhance the backscattering of the incident wave with a wide-angle view. According to the full-wave simulations, the proposed metasurface retroreflector can perform an excellent retroreflective effect for incident microwaves of angle view between −30° and 30° range. A prototype was fabricated and the experimental results verify that the metasurface retroreflector can realize the monostatic radar cross section (RCS) enhancement with a continuous wide incident angle view from −30° to 30° at 10 GHz within a stable 3 dB RCS level. It is further demonstrated that the excellent wide-angle backscattering performance (absolute RCS enhancement value, operational bandwidth and/or incident angle view) of the proposed microwave metasurface retroreflector is competitive against the traditional trihedral corner reflector with comparable dimensions, thus opening up new possibilities to substitute the traditional bulky radar retroreflector by using a planar compact metasurface structure for microwave engineering. The presented microwave metasurface retroreflector is promising to develop into a low-profile, light weight and planar radar retroreflector which possesses tremendous RCS backscattering enhancement and wide-angle view operation range. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spoof surface plasmons (SSPs) on the doubly corrugated metal surfaces can find a variety of applications, such as waveguides, filters, sensors, communications, and other high-performance active devices in terahertz (THz) and microwave bands. However, these studies so far are mostly on the perfect symmetric structure. In this paper, the asymmetric doubly corrugated metal surfaces are proposed to support and propagate SSP modes, which is inherently free from the conventional structure. The analytical dispersion theory of SSP modes on the structure is presented by a simplified field expansion method, which is also verified by a finite integration method. Based on the given modal analysis, the dispersion relations, propagation losses, and field profiles of the SSP modes with various geometric parameters for both 2D and 3D structures are investigated and analyzed in THz frequencies. By introducing an asymmetry of different upper and lower groove depths, the asymptotical frequency of the symmetric SSP mode at the Brillouin boundary can be largely tuned compared with the conventional symmetric structure. However, the asymptotical frequency of anti-symmetric SSPs on the structure is almost unmovable for the given structural parameters. The symmetric SSP mode demonstrates a larger propagation loss on the structure with the increased degree of asymmetry, while the anti-symmetric mode is inversely lower. By increasing the gap size between these two asymmetric corrugated metal surfaces, the propagation losses decrease for both symmetric and anti-symmetric SSP modes. SSP modes experience a larger distance on the asymmetric structure with an increased unit period and, thus, the damping losses are also enlarged. The effect of 3D structure parameters on the propagation characteristics of SSP modes with a closed sidewall is also considered for practical applications. The presented studies on the SSP modes of the asymmetric doubly corrugated metal surfaces provide new avenues to develop plenty of devices such as low-loss waveguides and filters and many other compact active devices at THz frequencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-resolution microscopy technique is of significant importance for studying nanomaterials. It is necessary to understand the near-field interaction between the probe and substrate materials in order to get the fine structure of the nanomaterial in the subwavelength scale. The numerical methods such as FDTD, FEM, and MoM are inefficient for the SNOM problems because of the illness of the impedance matrix. The analytic method can only be used for some simple objects such as sphere. Here, a quasianalytical method is developed, in which the analytic formula is refined to adapt to various shapes of the probe approaching the curve of SNOM. By this way, it is helpful in comparing the performance of different probes and giving us a direction to design a new type probe in SNOM. As an application, the developed method is used to study the contrast in the SNOM for the interface between the two different surfaces that have different materials and topography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]