A novel technique has been developed to verify the absolute accuracy and relative stability of a spaceborne microwave radiometer’s calibration using a statistical analysis of the measured Earth brightness temperatures (TBs). This procedure relies solely on the final, main beam-referenced TBs and so tests the complete end-to-end system calibration, including instrument temperature and non-linear...

The efficiency of plasmonic nanostructures as optical antennas to concentrate optical fields to the nanoscale has been limited by intrinsically short dephasing times and small absorption cross sections. We discuss a new optical antenna concept based on surface plasmon polariton (SPP) nanofocusing on conical noble metal tips to achieve efficient far- to near-field transformation of light from th...

This paper presents a cost effective and simple antijamming method for global positioning system (GPS) antennas in the GPS L1 (1.563–1.587 GHz) band. The proposed structure is composed of a metallic conical structure with a microstrip patch antenna, which is selected as the basic element. To overcome intentional jamming signals coming from low elevation angles, the structure is applied around t...

NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) has been using both 70-m and 34-m reflector antennas to communicate with spacecraft at S-band (2.3 GHz) and X-band (8.45 GHz). To improve the quality of telecommunication and to meet future mission requirements, JPL has been developing 34-m Ka-band (32-GHz) beamwaveguide antennas. Presently, antenna pointing operates in either the open-loop mode with blind pointi...

In this paper, a novel CPW-fed antenna is presented for UWB applications. The antenna mainly comprises of a simple circular patch and a modified ground plane. The inclusion of two novel symmetrical rectangular slots with inner area of 3×2.8 mm2 to the top corners of the antenna creates a new path for the current and consequently leads to the bandwidth enhancement. A rectangular stub is also ado...

In this study, a radiation pattern reconfigurable microstrip antenna is designed and fabricated. The antenna’s radiation pattern is directed in 9 different angles by employing a radiating patch and embedding complementary split ring resonators (CSRR) on the ground plane. The radiating patch is of circular shape, while for CSRR elements both circular and rectangular shapes are investigated. The ...