Electromagnetic Waves and Antennas

Page 1 of 10

Electromagnetic
Waves and Antennas
Sophocles J. Orfanidis
ECE Department
Rutgers University
94 Brett Road
Piscataway, NJ 08854-8058
Tel: 732-445-5017
e-mail: orfanidi@ece.rutgers.edu

This book is a work in progress. Any

feedback from readers is welcome.

This text provides a broad and applications-oriented introduction to electromagnetic waves and
antennas. Current interest in these areas is driven by the growth in wireless and fiber-optic
communications, information technology, and materials science.
Communications, antenna, radar, and microwave engineers must deal with the generation, transmission,
propagation, and reception of electromagnetic waves. Computer and solid-state device engineers
working on ever smaller integrated circuits and at ever higher frequencies must take into account wave
propagation effects at the chip and circuit-board levels. Communication and computer network
engineers routinely use waveguiding systems, such as transmission lines and optical fibers. Novel recent
developments in materials, such as photonic bandgap structures, omnidirectional dielectric mirrors, and
birefringent multilayer films, promise a revolution in the control and manipulation of light. These are
just some examples of topics discussed in this book.
The text is organized around three main topic areas:
z

z
z

The propagation, reflection, and transmission of plane waves, and the analysis and design of
multilayer films.
Waveguides, transmission lines, impedance matching, and S-parameters.
Linear and aperture antennas, scalar and vector diffraction theory, antenna array design, and
coupled antennas.

The text emphasizes connections to other subjects. For example, the mathematical techniques for
analyzing wave propagation in multilayer structures, multisegment transmission lines, and the design of

http://www.ece.rutgers.edu/~orfanidi/ewa/

1/16/2007

Electromagnetic Waves and Antennas

Page 2 of 10

multilayer optical filters are the same as those used in DSP, such as the lattice structures of linear
prediction, the analysis and synthesis of speech, and geophysical signal processing. Similarly, antenna
array design is related to the problem of spectral analysis of sinusoids and to digital filter design, and
Butler beams are equivalent to the FFT.

Individual chapters are available below in PDF format. Please note that they are subject to continuous
revision.
Initially posted online in November 2002. Last revision date - June 21, 2004.
Front Matter and Preface
Table of Contents
Ch.1: Maxwell's Equations
Review of Maxwell's equations, Lorentz force, constitutive relations, boundary conditions, charge
and energy conservation, Poynting's theorem, simple models of dielectrics, conductors, and
plasmas, relaxation time in conductors.
Ch.2: Uniform Plane Waves
Uniform plane waves in lossless media, monochromatic waves, wave impedance, polarization,
waves in lossy media, waves in weakly lossy dielectrics, propagation in good conductors,
propagation in oblique directions, complex waves, Doppler effect.
Ch.3: Propagation in Birefringent Media
Linear and circular birefringence, uniaxial and biaxial media, chiral media, natural vs. Faraday
rotation, gyrotropic media, linear and circular dichroism, oblique propagation in birefringent
media.
Ch.4: Reflection and Transmission
Reflection and transmission at normal incidence, propagation and matching matrices, reflected
and transmitted power, single and double dielectric slabs, reflectionless slab, time-domain
reflection response, lattice diagrams, reflection by a moving boundary, such as a moving mirror.
Ch.5: Multilayer Structures
Multiple dielectric slabs at normal incidence, antireflection coatings, dielectric mirrors,
propagation bandgaps, narrow-band transmission filters, quarter-wave phase-shifted Fabry-Perot
resonators, fiber Bragg gratings, equal travel-time multilayer structures, applications of layered
structures, Chebyshev design of reflectionless multilayers.
Ch.6: Oblique Incidence
Oblique incidence and Snell's laws, transverse impedance, propagation and matching of transverse
fields, Fresnel reflection coefficients, total internal reflection, Brewster angle, complex waves,
oblique reflection by a moving interface, geometrical optics, Fermat's principle of least time, ray
tracing techniques in geometrical optics illustrated by several exactly solvable examples drawn
from several applications, such as atmospheric refraction, mirages, ionospheric refraction,
propagation in a standard atmosphere and the effect of Earth's curvature, and propagation in
graded-index optical fibers.
Ch.7: Multilayer Film Applications

http://www.ece.rutgers.edu/~orfanidi/ewa/

1/16/2007

Electromagnetic Waves and Antennas

Page 3 of 10

Multilayer dielectric structures at oblique incidence, antireflection coatings at oblique incidence,

omnidirectional dielectric mirrors, polarizing beam splitters, reflection and refraction in
birefringent media, Brewster and critical angles in birefringent media, multilayer birefringent
structures, giant birefringent optics.
Ch.8: Waveguides
Longitudinal-transverse decompositions of Maxwell's equations, power transfer and attenuation in
guiding systems, TEM, TE, TM modes, rectangular waveguides, higher TE and TM modes,
operating bandwidth, power transfer, energy density, and group velocity in waveguides, power
attenuation, reflection model of waveguide propagation, dielectric slab guides.
Ch.9: Transmission Lines
General properties of TEM transmission lines, parallel-plate, microstrip, coaxial, and two-wire
lines, distributed circuit model of a transmission line, wave impedance and reflection response,
two-port equivalent circuits, terminated lines, power transfer from generator to load, open- and
short-circuited lines, Thevenin and Norton equivalent circuits, standing wave ratio, determination
of unknown load impedance, Smith chart. Transient Response.
Ch.10: Coupled Lines
Coupled transmission lines, even-odd mode decomposition for identical matched or unmatched
lines, crosstalk between lines, weakly coupled lines with arbitrary terminations, coupled-mode
theory, co-directional couplers, fiber Bragg gratings as examples of contra-directional couplers,
quarter-wave phase-shifted fiber Bragg gratings as narrow-band transmission filters, and the
Schuster-Kubelka-Munk theory of diffuse reflection and transmission as an example of contradirectional coupling.
Ch.11: Impedance Matching
Conjugate and reflectionless matching, multisection transmission lines, quarter-wavelength
impedance transformers, two-section dual-band Chebyshev transformers, quarter-wavelength
transformers with series sections and shunt stubs, two-section series impedance transformers,
single-stub matching, balanced stubs, double- and triple-stub matching, L-, T-, and Pi-section
lumped reactive matching networks and their Q-factors.
Ch.12: S-Parameters
Scattering parameters, power flow, parameter conversions, input and output reflection
coefficients, stability circles, transducer, operating, and available power gains, generalized Sparameters and power waves, simultaneous conjugate matching, power gain circles, unilateral
gain circles, operating and available power gain circles, noise figure circles, design examples of
low-noise high-gain microwave amplifiers and their microstrip matching circuits.
Ch.13: Radiation Fields
Currents and charges as sources of fields, retarded potentials, fields of a linear wire antenna, near
and far fields of electric and magnetic dipoles, Ewald-Oseen extinction theorem of molecular
optics, radiation fields, radiation field approximation, computing the radiation fields, radiation
vector.
Ch.14: Transmitting and Receiving Antennas
Energy flux and radiation intensity from a radiating system, directivity, gain, and beamwidth of an
antenna, effective area, gain-beamwidth product, antenna equivalent circuits, effective length and
polarization and load mismatches, communicating antennas, Friis formula, antenna noise

http://www.ece.rutgers.edu/~orfanidi/ewa/

1/16/2007

Electromagnetic Waves and Antennas

Page 4 of 10

temperature, system noise temperature, limits on bit rates, satellite links, radar equation.
Ch.15: Linear and Loop Antennas
Linear antennas, Hertzian dipole, standing-wave antennas, half-wave dipole, monopole antennas,
traveling wave antennas, vee and rhombic antennas, loop antennas, circular and square loops,
dipole and quadruple radiation.
Ch.16: Radiation from Apertures
Field equivalence principle, magnetic currents and duality, radiation fields from magnetic
currents, radiation fields from apertures, Kottler's formula, Huygens sources, directivity and
effective area of apertures, uniform, rectangular, and circular apertures and their gain-beamwidth
products, Rayleigh diffraction limit, vector diffraction theory, Stratton-Chu, Kottler, Franz, and
Kirchhoff diffraction integral formulas, extinction theorem, vector diffraction from apertures,
Fresnel diffraction, Knife-edge diffraction, geometrical theory of diffraction and Sommerfeld's
solution for a conducting half-plane.
Ch.17: Aperture Antennas
Open-ended waveguides, horn antennas, horn radiation fields, horn directivity, optimum horn
design, microstrip antennas, parabolic reflector antennas, gain and beamwidth of reflector
antennas, aperture-field and current-distribution methods, radiation patterns of reflector antennas,
dual-reflector antennas, lens antennas.
Ch.18: Antenna Arrays
Antenna arrays and translational phase shift, array pattern multiplication, one-dimensional arrays,
visible region, grating lobes, uniform arrays, array directivity, steering, and beamwidth.
Ch.19: Array Design Methods
Schelkunoff's zero-placement method, Fourier series design method with windowing, sector beam
array design, Woodward-Lawson frequency-sampling design, narrow-beam low-sidelobe designs,
binomial arrays, Dolph-Chebyshev arrays, Taylor-Kaiser arrays, multi-beam arrays, emphasis on
the connections to DSP methods of digital filter design and spectral analysis of sinusoids.
Ch.20: Currents on Linear Antennas
Hallen and Pocklington integral equations, delta-gap and plane-wave sources, solving Hallen's
equation, sinusoidal current approximation, reflecting and center-loaded receiving antennas,
King's three-term approximation, numerical solution of Hallen's equation, numerical solutions
using pulse functions and for arbitrary incident field, numerical solution of Pocklington's
equation.
Ch.21: Coupled Antennas
Near fields of linear antennas, self and mutual impedance, coupled two-element arrays, arrays of
parallel dipoles, Yagi-Uda antennas, Hallen equations for coupled antennas.
Appendices
Physical constants, electromagnetic frequency bands, vector identities and integral theorems,
Green's functions, coordinate systems, Fresnel integrals, Lorentz transformations, list of
MATLAB functions.
References
Index

http://www.ece.rutgers.edu/~orfanidi/ewa/

1/16/2007

Electromagnetic Waves and Antennas

Page 5 of 10

Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 1996-2004 by Sophocles J. Orfanidis, All Rights Reserved. The book currently exists only
in online form through the web page www.ece.rutgers.edu/~orfanidi/ewa. Links to this page may be
placed on any web site.
Any part of this book may be downloaded and printed for personal or educational use only, as long as
the printed or photocopied pages are not altered in any way from the original PDF files posted on the
book's web page.
No part of this book may be reproduced, altered in any way, or transmitted in any form for commercial,
profit, sale, or marketing purposes.

MATLAB Toolbox
The text makes extensive use of MATLAB. We have developed an "Electromagnetic Waves &
Antennas" toolbox containing 140 MATLAB functions for carrying out all of the computations and
simulation examples in the text. Code segments illustrating the usage of these functions are found
throughout the book, and serve as a user manual. The functions may be grouped into the following
categories:
z

Design and analysis of multilayer film structures, including antireflection coatings, polarizers,
omnidirectional mirrors, narrow-band transmission filters, birefringent multilayer films and giant
birefringent optics.
Design of quarter-wavelength impedance transformers and other impedance matching methods,
such as stub matching and L-, Pi- and T-section reactive matching networks.
Design and analysis of transmission lines and waveguides, such as microstrip lines and dielectric
slab guides.
S-parameter functions for gain computations, Smith chart generation, stability, gain, and noisefigure circles, conjugate matching, and microwave amplifier design.
Functions for the computation of directivities and gain patterns of linear antennas, such as dipole,
vee, rhombic, and traveling-wave antennas.
Aperture antenna functions, for open-ended waveguides, horn antenna design, diffraction
integrals, and knife-edge diffraction coefficients.
Antenna array design functions for uniform, binomial, Dolph-Chebyshev, Taylor arrays, sectorbeam, multi-beam, Woodward-Lawson, and Butler arrays. Functions for beamwidth and
directivity calculations, and for steering and scanning arrays.
Numerical methods for solving the Hallen and Pocklington integral equations for single and
coupled antennas and computing self and mutual impedances.
Several functions for making azimuthal and polar plots of antenna and array gain patterns in
decibels and absolute units.
There are also several MATLAB movies showing the propagation of step signals and pulses on
terminated transmission lines, or propagating on cascaded lines, step signals getting reflected off
reactive terminations, fault location by TDR, propagating crosstalk signals on coupled lines, and
time-evolution of the field lines radiated by a dipole antenna.

http://www.ece.rutgers.edu/~orfanidi/ewa/

1/16/2007

Electromagnetic Waves and Antennas

Page 6 of 10

Please read the license agreement before using the toolbox. The toolbox was developed under MATLAB
v5.3. The zipped file ewa.zip (revised on Feb. 28, 2004) contains all the MATLAB functions. It should
be uncompressed in a directory, say c:\antennas\ewa. To add this directory to the MATLAB path and
to get initial help, use the following commands:
addpath c:\antennas\ewa;
help ewa;

Note that just typing the name of any function will produce a help/usage comment for that function. For
gain plots that will eventually be exported into EPS and inserted in LaTeX files, we found it best to add
the following lines to the MATLAB startup.m file:
set(0,'DefaultAxesLineWidth', 1);
set(0,'DefaultLineLineWidth', 1.5);

The detailed list of the MATLAB functions is as follows:

Multilayer Dielectric Structures
------------------------------n2r - refractive indices to reflection coefficients of M-layer structure
r2n - reflection coefficients to refractive indices of M-layer structure
multidiel - reflection response of isotropic or birefringent multilayer
dielectric structure
multidiel1 - simplified version of multidiel for isotropic layers
multidiel2 - reflection response of lossy isotropic multilayer dielectric
structures
omniband - bandwidth of omnidirectional mirrors and Brewster polarizers
omniband2 - bandwidth of birefringent multilayer mirrors
brewster - calculates Brewster and critical angles for isotropic or
birefringent media
fresnel - Fresnel reflection coefficients for isotropic or birefringent
media
snell - calculates refraction angles from Snell's law for birefringent
media
Quarter-Wavelength Transformers
------------------------------bkwrec - order-decreasing backward layer recursion - from a,b to r
frwrec - order-increasing forward layer recursion - from r to A,B
chebtr - Chebyshev design of broadband reflectionless quarter-wave
transformer
chebtr2 - Chebyshev design of broadband reflectionless quarter-wave
transformer
chebtr3 - Chebyshev design of broadband reflectionless quarter-wave
transformer
Dielectric Waveguides
--------------------dguide - TE modes in dielectric slab waveguide
dslab - solves for the TE-mode cutoff wavenumbers in a dielectric slab

http://www.ece.rutgers.edu/~orfanidi/ewa/

1/16/2007

Electromagnetic Waves and Antennas

Page 7 of 10

Transmission Lines
-----------------g2z - reflection coefficient to impedance
z2g - impedance to reflection coefficient
lmin - find locations of voltage minima and maxima
mstripa - microstrip analysis (calculates Z,eff from w/h)
mstripr - microstrip synthesis with refinement (calculates w/h from Z)
mstrips - microstrip synthesis (calculates w/h from Z)
multiline - reflection response of multi-segment transmission line
swr - standing wave ratio
tsection - T-section equivalent of a length-l transmission line segment
gprop - reflection coefficient propagation
vprop - voltage and current propagation
zprop - wave impedance propagation
Impedance Matching
-----------------qwt1 - quarter wavelength transformer with series segment
qwt2 - quarter wavelength transformer with 1/8-wavelength shunt stub
qwt3 - quarter wavelength transformer with shunt stub of adjustable
length
dualband - two-section dual-band Chebyshev transformer
dualbw - bandwidth of dual-band transformer
stub1 - single-stub matching
stub2 - double-stub matching
stub3 - triple-stub matching
onesect - one-section impedance transformer
twosect - two-section impedance transformer
pi2t t2pi lmatch
pmatch

Pi to T transformation
T to Pi transformation
- L-section reactive conjugate matching network
- Pi-section reactive conjugate matching network

S-Parameters
-----------gin - input reflection coefficient in terms of S-parameters
gout - output reflection coefficient in terms of S-parameters
nfcirc - constant noise figure circle
nfig - noise figure of two-port
sgain - transducer, available, and operating power gains of two-port
sgcirc - stability and gain circles
smat - S-parameters to S-matrix
smatch - simultaneous conjugate match of a two-port
smith - draw basic Smith chart
smithcir - add stability and constant gain circles on Smith chart
sparam - stability parameters of two-port
circint - circle intersection on Gamma-plane
circtan - point of tangency between the two circles
Linear Antenna Functions

http://www.ece.rutgers.edu/~orfanidi/ewa/

1/16/2007

Electromagnetic Waves and Antennas

Page 8 of 10

-----------------------dipole - gain of center-fed linear dipole of length L

traveling - gain of traveling-wave antenna of length L
vee - gain of traveling-wave vee antenna
rhombic - gain of traveling-wave rhombic antenna
dmax - computes directivity and beam solid angle of a gain function
hallen - solve Hallen's integral equation with delta-gap input
hallen2 - solve Hallen's integral equation with arbitrary incident Efield
hallen3 - solve Hallen's integral equation for 2D array of identical
linear antennas
hallen4 - solve Hallen's integral equation for 2D array of non-identical
linear antennas
pockling - solve Pocklington's integral equation for linear antenna
king - King's 3-term sinusoidal approximation
kingeval - evaluate King's 3-term sinusoidal current approximation
kingfit - fits a sampled current to King's 2-term sinusoidal
approximation
gain2 - normalized gain of arbitrary 2D array of linear sinusoidal
antennas
gain2h - gain of 2D array of non-identical linear antennas with Hallen
currents
imped - mutual impedance between two parallel standing-wave dipoles
impedmat - mutual impedance matrix of array of parallel dipole antennas
resonant - calculates the length of a resonant dipole antenna
yagi - simplified Yagi-Uda array design
Aperture Antenna Functions
-------------------------diffint - generalized Fresnel diffraction integral
diffr - knife-edge diffraction coefficient
dsinc - the double-sinc function cos(pi*x)/(1-4*x^2)
fcs - Fresnel integrals C(x) and S(x)
fcs2 - type-2 Fresnel integrals C2(x) and S2(x)
hband - horn antenna 3-dB width
heff - aperture efficiency of horn antenna
hgain - horn antenna H-plane and E-plane gains
hopt - optimum horn antenna design
hsigma - optimum sigma parametes for horn antenna
Antenna Array Functions
----------------------array - gain computation for 1D equally-spaced isotropic array
bwidth - beamwidth mapping from psi-space to phi-space
binomial - binomial array weights
dolph - Dolph-Chebyshev array weights
dolph2 - Riblet-Pritchard version of Dolph-Chebyshev
dolph3 - DuHamel version of endfire Dolph-Chebyshev
multibeam - multibeam array design
sector - sector beam array design
scan - scan array with given scanning phase
steer - steer array towards given angle
taylor - Taylor-Kaiser window array weights
uniform - uniform array weights

http://www.ece.rutgers.edu/~orfanidi/ewa/

1/16/2007

Electromagnetic Waves and Antennas

Page 9 of 10

woodward - Woodward-Lawson-Butler beams

chebarray - Bresler's Chebyshev array design method - written by P. Simon
(I would like to thank Dr. Simon for permission to include this function
in this collection.)
Gain Plotting Functions
----------------------abp - polar gain plot in absolute units
abz - azimuthal gain plot in absolute units
ab2p - polar gain plot in absolute units - 2*pi angle range
abz2 - azimuthal gain plot in absolute units - 2pi angle range
dbp - polar gain plot in dB
dbz - azimuthal gain plot in dB
dbp2 - polar gain plot in dB - 2*pi angle range
dbz2 - azimuthal gain plot in dB - 2pi angle range
abadd - add gain in absolute units
abadd2 - add gain in absolute units - 2pi angle range
dbadd - add gain in dB
dbadd2 - add gain in dB - 2pi angle range
addbwp - add 3-dB angle beamwidth in polar plots
addbwz - add 3-dB angle beamwidth in azimuthal plots
addcirc - add grid circle in polar or azimuthal plots
addline - add grid ray line in azimuthal or polar plots
addray - add ray in azimuthal or polar plots
Miscellaneous Utility Functions
-------------------------------ab - dB to absolute power units
db - absolute power to dB units
c2p - complex number to phasor form
p2c - phasor form to complex number
d2r - degrees to radians
r2d - radians to degrees
dtft - DTFT of a signal x at a frequency vector w
I0 - modified Bessel function of 1st kind and 0th order
ellipse - polarization ellipse parameters
etac - eta and c
wavenum - calculate wavenumber and characteristic impedance
poly2 - specialized version of poly with increased accuracy
quadr - Gauss-Legendre quadrature weights and evaluation points
quadrs - Gauss-Legendre quadrature weights and evaluation points on
subintervals
flip - flip a column, a row, or both
blockmat - manipulate block matrices
upulse - generates trapezoidal, rectangular, triangular pulses, or a
unit-step
ustep - unit-step or rising unit-step function
MATLAB Movies (in subdirectory ewa\movies)
------------------------------------------

http://www.ece.rutgers.edu/~orfanidi/ewa/

1/16/2007

Electromagnetic Waves and Antennas

Page 10 of 10

pulsemovie - step and pulse propagation on terminated transmission lines

pulse2movie - step and pulse propagation on two cascaded lines
RLCmovie - step getting reflected from a reactive termination
TDRmovie - fault location by time-domain reflectometry
xtalkmovie - crosstalk signals on coupled transmission lines
dipmovie - electric field pattern of radiating Hertzian dipole

http://www.ece.rutgers.edu/~orfanidi/ewa/

1/16/2007