Haleakala R&D, INC. will develop an innovative plasma antenna that provides high voltage protection to reduce the risk of electrical shocks from low overhead wires for dismounted radio. This plasma antenna will provide equivalent or better radiation pattern and omnidirectional gain as existing handheld or man pack radio antennas. It will also be made of a flexible plastic tube or blade with tiny glass beads lined on the inside of the plastic tube or blade to give flexibility collapsibility, storability, and stowability in a back pack or other means. It can be painted a camouflage color to diminish visibility. The plasma need only be turned on while is use and while not in use (plasma extinguished) it does not conduct current. The plasma is in a nonconductive, dielectric tube or blade which provides high voltage protection to reduce the risk of electrical shocks from low overhead wires for dismounted radio whether the plasma is on or extinguished. The plasma antenna which has the same shape, size and frequencies as a metal antenna will give the same radiation patterns as a corresponding metal antenna but with lower thermal noise and lower side lobes. The plasma antennas have reconfigurable properties that metal antennas do not. The simplest reconfigurablity is that the plasma can be extinguished when not in use while the metal in a metal antenna is always there and cannot be extinguished.
Benefit: Haleakala R&D will support the Marine Corps in transitioning the plasma antenna technology for Marine Corps use. Haleakala R&D will develop a plasma antenna for evaluation to determine its effectiveness in an operationally relevant environment. Haleakala R&D will support the Marine Corps for test and validation to certify and qualify the plasma antenna system for Marine Corps use. Haleakala R&D will commercialize the plasma antenna technology to municipalities, law enforcement, and first responders who also use radios sharing the same radio bands. A plasma antenna of reduced size antenna with superior range and performance would also be attractive to these applications. Such plasma antenna applications could be both applied to both handheld or vehicle mounted applications. Commercial Technology Overview: Unlike metal antennas, plasma antennas can be turned on and off. When turned on, plasma antennas are fully functional RF devices. However, when turned off, they neither emit nor receive RF signals, and they can be invisible to radar, making them electronically undetectable. This feature improves security over their metal counterparts and makes plasma antennas ideal for stealth applications. Plasma antennas can be developed using conventional materials and manufacturing techniques similar to those used to manufacture fluorescent lighting, neon lighting, and other existing industrial products. The gases and materials contemplated for use in gaseous plasma antennas and smart plasma antennas are inert, and/or they are prevalent in the atmosphere. The initial introduction and ongoing manufacturing costs of gaseous plasma antennas will be relatively low. The technology will not initially introduce new substances that might require exceptional environmental certification or pose unforeseen technical manufacturing hurdles with an unfamiliar manufacturing process (on-the-fly). Target Markets 1. Smart TV plasma antennas to meet the change over into digital airwaves. Dave Wilson, senior director of Consumer Electronics Association, saw our smart plasma antenna prototype work at the Austin antenna conference in September and believes we should have a market in the smart TV antenna market. We have looked at other smart antennas that address this area and we are convinced that ours is superior. GE and RCA have put commercial civilian smart antennas on the market recently to address the 2009 changeover to digital airwaves. Our smart plasma antenna capabilities are superior in many was to the other smart TV antennas. Our smart plasma antenna can steer the antenna beam 360 degrees and the competition cannot. Our smart plasma antenna has a reconfigurable beamwidth . The competition does not. Our smart plasma antenna has higher bandwidth than the bandwidths of the competition. We give some information on the smart TV antennas from GE and Audiovox taken from their websites in the competition section below. 2. Smart plasma antennas as RFID readers We have determined advantages that the smart plasma antenna can have over other RFID antennas based on smart phased array technology. These advantages that our smart plasma antenna can have over smart phased array antennas for RFID applications are: 1. Our smart plasma antenna has the ability to steer (scan) antenna beams 360 degrees in milliseconds. We are aware of how to do it in microseconds. Competition cannot steer 360 degrees. 2. Our smart plasma antenna beam can change direction without scanning in milliseconds. For example: from 0 to 180 degrees in milliseconds 3. Reconfigurable beamwidth. Competition cannot do this. 4. Broader bandwidth than phased arrays by using broadband omnidirectional antenna in the center such as a biconical antenna. In addition, bandwidth can be reconfigured for use in US , Europe, etc. Competition cannot do this. 5. Less costs than phased array RFID antennas. We only need one antenna and we do not need phase shifters. Competition uses phased array RFID readers. 6. Our smart plasma antenna is more compact and less cumbersome than phased array RFID antennas. than phased array RFID antennas. We only need one antenna and we do not need phase shifters. Competition uses phased array RFID readers. 7. Our smart plasma antenna is light weight: weighs about 10 pounds. Competition uses phased array RFID readers which are much heavier and larger. 8. Our smart plasma antenna can read vertical horizontal, and circular polarizations by reconfiguration of plasma antennas. Competition cannot do this. 3. Superior fixed satellite plasma antennas and satellite plasma antennas for RVs and yachts. We are working on some initial experiments that may lead to an agreement with a company to develop smart plasma satellite antennas in the Ku and Ka bands. 4. WIMAX. The current markets for smart antennas for WIMAX is given in appendix . West, Kirsten; Principal Analyst, West Technology Research, Smart Antenna Technology Review 0x9D , Antenna Systems & Technology, 2008 Resource Guide, pages 4 and 6. 5. 3 G and 4 G The current markets for smart antennas for 3 G is given in appendix . West, Kirsten; Principal Analyst, West Technology Research, Smart Antenna Technology Review 0x9D , Antenna Systems & Technology, 2008 Resource Guide, pages 4 and 6. 6. Wi-Fi The current markets for smart antennas for Wi-Fi is given in appendix . West, Kirsten; Principal Analyst, West Technology Research, Smart Antenna Technology Review 0x9D , Antenna Systems & Technology, 2008 Resource Guide, pages 4 and 6. 7. Smart plasma antennas to replace omni directional wireless access point antennas in big box stores such as Walmart, CVS, Home Depot, Lowes, Best Buy, etc. These stores utilized sometime 6-30 Omni directional wireless access point also known as APs 0x9D . The APs are extremely inefficient and have a high total cost of ownership with data security standard such as PCI compliance mandating encryption key rotation every 6 months. Major tier one retails utilize wireless infrastructure to drive business initiatives such as markdown, inventory, and price lookup. The big box stores such as Walmart, CVS, Home Depot, Lowes, Best Buy etc. utilized sometime 6-30 Omni directional wireless access point also known as APs 0x9D . The APs are extremely inefficient and have a high total cost of ownership with data security standard such as PCI compliance mandating encryption key rotation every 6 months. What if major retailers had another wireless solution besides 6+ Omni directional wireless APs? Why wouldnt they utilize a technology that would drive their TCO lower over time? Why wouldnt they want to only maintain 1-2 devices at stores? The smart plasma antenna could fit the technology needs of this extremely large customer base. By leveraging 1 to 2 plasma antennas at larger than 40,000 sq ft buildings plasma antenna technology would reduce cost s for retailers, warehouses, distribution centers, convention centers, arenas, airports, and malls. High-speed wireless networking under constraints of limited spectrum, non-line-of-sight issues remains a challenging problem. Current systems (eg: 3G and 4G networks) promise a maximum of about 2 Mbps, shared among users. Smart antennas, in combination with appropriate modulation and medium-access-control (MAC) schemes, promises to break this bandwidth barrier, and lower costs. Our plasma antennae technology represents a disruptive technology in that it will provide the customer with increased bandwidth along with unprecedented security via its directionality. Target Market: The technology and products being developed at Haleakala are designed to appeal to anyone interested in increased security and flexible wireless technology. Hence, we expect strong initial interested from the military and other government establishments Commercial Technology Overview: We have designed a smart plasma antenna and we see its commercialization for phase III work as follows: Smart plasma antennas typically use a multi-element-array antenna, and place the intelligent processing (smarts 0x9D ) in the signal processing aspects. The antenna hardware itself is a fairly simple structure consisting of omni-directional or directional elements arranged in a particular geometrical configuration. In our plasma technology, we aim to dramatically increase the degrees of freedom offered by the antenna hardware itself, so that the signal processing software can leverage it to achieve even more sophisticated capabilities (rejection or leverage of multi-path effects) while lowering overall system cost. The cost reduction in the antenna and signal processing elements will allow new high-speed wireless networking architectures to be developed as described below. In particular, consider the multi-hop meshed wireless distribution network architecture in figure below that connects a final-hop smart plasma antenna to a base-station. For simplicity a fixed wireless network is depicted in the figure. Lampposts (or equivalent structures) would host a last-hop 0x9D smart plasma antenna and also participate in a relaying function. The mobile 0x9D or home 0x9D user would reach the base-station after traversing several hops in this network. Now, high-speed communication in this model becomes feasible when the home or mobile has a directional antenna and the last-hop has smart plasma antennas with the associated signal processing capabilities. This is because of the spectrum reuse, focusing of energy, and multi-path fading rejection that leads to dramatically higher signal-to-noise ratios. The additional key is to design such smart plasma antennas at low cost and small form factors. Moreover, if the front-end antenna hardware also allows sophisticated and tunable beam-forming capabilities, then it provides new degrees of freedom of the plasma antenna that can be leveraged by signal-processing systems which control and interface to it. In fact, even with current simple multi-element-array antennas at both ends, the Lucent BLAST(Bell Labs Layered Space-Time) system has demonstrated tremendous spectral efficiency of 20 bits/Hz! The adaptive directionality of our smart plasma antennas provides a plethora of advantages. The directivity of each antenna beam minimizes the power levels broadcast which might interfere with adjacent users. In this sense, it provides a form of SDMA. The directivity of the antenna also reduces the power levels that could be detected by unfriendly agents. The adaptive nature of the plasma antenna allows the beam to follow the user with a minimum of computation required, as well as to alter the beamwidth depending if the user is in an area of high user density or requiring greater stealth, where the beam can be made very narrow, or if the user is relatively isolated moving at a great speed, where the beam can be made wider .In order to further reduce the transmission power levels, thus conserving battery power and concealing the position of the users and nodes, a low spreading gain code can be applied to each users signal. The low gain permits us to maintain a high data rate. The highly directional property of our smart plasma antenna does not require a high gain for multiple access. A low tap Walsh code would be enough to permit very low transmission levels, and good protection for each user. In addition, automatic power control can be implemented to decrease the collective power transmission of the entire network. In a civilian setting, where our goals are to provide low cost and flexibility, we can use the directivity of our smart plasma antenna as a form of implementing SDMA. The figures above show examples of this. In this case, we consider the angle of service for each user can be estimated by a pair of omni-directional antennas placed on the same tower. This setup allows the array of our smart plasma antennas to provide uninterrupted service to users without having to estimate the direction of service. The adaptive beamwidth can be adjusted to accommodate users who are in close proximity, providing protection from interference for each user. The variable number of beams from our smart plasma antenna allows the base to service a variable number of users at diverse locations. This eliminates the need for a technician to install additional antennas or make changes when new users initiate service or when other users terminate service.
Keywords: Plasma Antenna, Plasma Antenna, smart plasma antenna, Tactical Radio, AN/PRC-152, reconfigurable plasma antenna, AN/PRC-150, AN/PRC-117G, AN/PRC-117F
