Suppressing High-Power Microwave Pulses Using Spoof Surface Plasmon Polariton Mono-Pulse Antenna

Abstract

We propose to suppress high-power microwave pulses (HPMPs) using nonlinear dispersion and filtering natures of spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SSPPs). Frequency components of a short HPMP are distributed in time domain due to different group velocities and partly cutoff on SSPP transmission lines (TLs), leading to peak suppression of HPMP. To illustrate the protection mechanism in real microwave engineering, an SSPP mono-pulse antenna is designed. Sum and difference beam functions of the antenna are demonstrated by both simulations and experiments. For easy comparison, a microstrip mono-pulse antenna is also fabricated. HPMP incidences from the main lobe directions of the sum beam and difference beam are considered. Compared to the microstrip antenna, obvious suppression of HPMPs is observed in the SSPP mono-pulse antenna in different cases, which verifies the better performance to prevent HPMP damages by SSPPs. The proposed technology to suppress HPMPs by using SSPPs can find wide applications in radar and communication systems in the electronic warfare environment.