Transmission characteristics of EM wave in a finite thickness plasma

One of the key factors for solving the problems of re-entry communication interruption is electromagnetic (EM) wave transmission characteristics in a plasma. Theoretical and experimental studies were carried out on specific transmission characteristics for different plasma sheath characteristic under thin sheath condition in re-entry state. The paper presents systematic studies on the variations of wave attenuation characteristics versus plasma sheath thickness L, collision frequency ν, electron density ne and wave working frequency f in a φ 800mm high temperature shock tube. In experiments, L is set to 4 cm and 38 cm. ν is 2 GHz and 15 GHz. ne is from 1×10^10 cm−3 to 1×10^13 cm−3, and f is set to 2, 5, 10, 14.6 GHz, respectively. Meanwhile, Wentzel–Kramers–Brillouin (WKB) and finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) methods are adopted to carry out theoretical simulation for comparison with experimental results. It is found that when L is much larger than EM wavelength λ (thick sheath) and ν is large, the theoretical result is in good agreement with experimental one, when sheath thickness L is much larger than λ, while ν is relatively small, two theoretical results are obviously different from the experimental ones. It means that the existing theoretical model can not fully describe the contribution of ν. Furthermore, when L and λ are of the same order of magnitude (thin sheath), the experimental result is much smaller than the theoretical values, which indicates that the current model can not properly describe the thin sheath effect on EM attenuation characteristics