Spurious signals generated by electron tunneling on large reflector antennas

Large reflector antennas are currently fabricated by assembling a large number of small light aluminum panels onto a superstructure. A large number of aluminum-to-aluminum joints are inherently exposed to RF radiation on such an antenna. It is shown in this paper that the natural oxide layer on alum...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the IEEE 1975-01, Vol.63 (2), p.306-313
Main Author: Higa, W.H.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aluminum
Demodulation
Electrons
Fading
Frequency
Receiving antennas
Reflector antennas
Signal generators
Space vehicles
Tunneling
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Large reflector antennas are currently fabricated by assembling a large number of small light aluminum panels onto a superstructure. A large number of aluminum-to-aluminum joints are inherently exposed to RF radiation on such an antenna. It is shown in this paper that the natural oxide layer on aluminum is of the correct thickness to permit electron tunneling through the Al-Al 2 O 3 -Al junctions. The nonlinearity due to the junctions then generates spurious signals when these antennas are used for simultaneous transmission and reception of signals at different frequencies. Moreover, the large number of junctions (rivets) on an antenna can combine to produce serious inteference in these diplexed systems.
ISSN:0018-9219
1558-2256
DOI:10.1109/PROC.1975.9736