Possible new type of electromagnetic wave antenna

[K]

I have recently recieved an independent report on the technology i am working on, and i believe i may have discovered a new type of antenna. I have plenty of hypothesis and in house testing but i will only talk about what has been independently verified.
This is an excerpt from the report:

"This particular group of cells uses two collectors that are not galvanic cell pairs.

This one particular group of cells responded highly to incoming EM wave's.
Frequency tests showed a strong response to frequencies between 1KHz to 10MHz.
The limit of my equipment was reached, and there was no sign of signal fading or response of the cells at the top end frequencies.
No galvanic response was shown with this particular group of cells during the test.

Having designed and built many rectennas over the years, this particular cell group seems to show response to EM waves that I have not seen before."


My understanding is that an antenna is a tuned length relative to the signal, and my antenna recieved without degradation across the whole spectrum of the testing equiptment 1KHz thru to 10MHz.

Does anyone know of, or have read of, an antenna which recieves over a wide electromagnetic band, or exhibits these properties?

Thanks for any input.

[poynt99]

Welcome to the forum K.

I've not heard of an antenna with that wide a bandwidth. I have a few questions though if you could:

1) What are "cells" referring to?
2) What are the scope shots showing?
3) Is the antenna directional, omni-directional, or can be made both?
4) Is the received signal strength fair;y equal across that 1kHz-10MHz band?

[TinMan]

Welcome to the forum K 

[K]

Welcome to the forum K.

I've not heard of an antenna with that wide a bandwidth. I have a few questions though if you could:

1) What are "cells" referring to?
2) What are the scope shots showing?
3) Is the antenna directional, omni-directional, or can be made both?
4) Is the received signal strength fairly equal across that 1kHz-10MHz band?

1) The "cells" refer to the antenna unit. Current collectors and metasurface hermetically sealed into a cell, or antenna unit.
2) The scope shots are screen grabs of the signals being recieved, with the origional source beings a sine wave generator running thru a coil. One at 100KHz, the other at 10MHz, both oscilloscope screen shots are from the same cell (antenna unit) with the incoming sine waves transmitted at the same power and distance.
3) I have no independant testing on this yet so i cannot say for sure.
4) Yes, the recieved signal strength is fairly equal across all bands tested, with a recommendation to expand the testing frequencies to try to find the outer limits.

And thankyou all for the welcomes, a very interesting forum indeed.

[poynt99]

- It would be interesting to see how high a frequency your antenna works. What plans do you have to get further testing done?
- You refer to "galvanic" a couple of times in your description. To what do you mean?
- What is the intended purpose of this antenna? examples: energy harvesting, radio communications etc?
- What do you hope to achieve by posting this at OUR?

[Smudge]

Perhaps K's reference to a rectenna answers the question, a rectifying antenna used for power transfer by radio waves.  It converts the received RF power into DC power..

Smudge

[K]

- It would be interesting to see how high a frequency your antenna works. What plans do you have to get further testing done?
- You refer to "galvanic" a couple of times in your description. To what do you mean?
- What is the intended purpose of this antenna? examples: energy harvesting, radio communications etc?
- What do you hope to achieve by posting this at OUR?

-For future testing more independant verification with scientific vigour is required. This means trying to find the right person/people with the specialised equiptment to continue testing other frequencies, microwave all the way to cosmic radiation, and record the AC outputs. I also wish to have the correlation between electromagnetic wave input to the digital DC output logged and graphed.

-The word galvanic is used in reference to one of the other designs tested but not logged. For isolating the core technology we focused on an asymetrical design with no electrical potential between dissimilar current collectors.

-There must be many uses for such an antenna, one potential may be deep space radio astronomy. My patent does cover energy harvesting but I have found some people become belligerant with this concept, therefore I am focusing on the antenna side of this technology until enough independently verified data has been collected.

-As for my reasons, The main objective is due dilligence. If anyone has heard of an antenna like this existing I would like to know. I am also open to suggestions on how to move this project foward. And on a more personal level its validating to connect with like minded people.

[K]

Perhaps K's reference to a rectenna answers the question, a rectifying antenna used for power transfer by radio waves.  It converts the received RF power into DC power..

Smudge

Yes, it is possible for radio signals to be rectified into DC output but I am focusing on the AC antenna component of this technology for now. The novelty lies in the ability to recieve wide band frequencies on a single meta-surface antenna.

[Allcanadian]

K

Welcome...

The "cells" refer to the antenna unit. Current collectors and metasurface hermetically sealed into a cell, or antenna unit.

I also have an interest in metasurface/cavity resonance however much of it was too complex until I got into 3D printing. In my opinion the technology was inevitable because the present standard for EM TX/RX amounts to "a wire", lol. Which begs the question... a wire is the best they can do?.

-There must be many uses for such an antenna, one potential may be deep space radio astronomy. My patent does cover energy harvesting but I have found some people become belligerant with this concept, therefore I am focusing on the antenna side of this technology until enough independently verified data has been collected.

Much of this technology relates to the Casimir effect as a wave guide then enhanced by internal structures which further concentrates said guided waves. So there is a specific process involved as wave guides, concentrators then surface interfaces onto the conductors. Many people have problems wrapping there mind around such complex systems and energy scavenging, such is life. In my opinion the better option is to build a working technology then offer it for sale at which point people can take it or leave it.

As for my reasons, The main objective is due dilligence. If anyone has heard of an antenna like this existing I would like to know. I am also open to suggestions on how to move this project foward. And on a more personal level its validating to connect with like minded people.

I have heard of many devices and read countless lectures/patents in my travels. T.H.Moray started out building energy concentrating structures then moved onto self-exciting amplifiers similar to that found in crystal radio's. Much of his work initially related to zero threshold or lossless rectification allowing efficiencies most can only dream about. ALD is now making the EPAD, zero-gate threshold mosfets which might help with power conversion in your device.

Regards
AC

[poynt99]

For the lower radio frequency bands below say 30MHz (the HF band and below), the usefulness of the antenna would be largely based on its efficiency or sensitivity. In plain terms, the level of signal it can capture in comparison to a traditional 1/4 wave whip antenna for example. If it is in the same ballpark, then that would be of great interest.

Would it be correct to assume the antenna also works as well in reverse for transmitting?



I would assume you have heard of Bill Beaty and read his articles, one on "Energy Sucking Radio Antennas Short Version", and the other on "Energy Sucking Radio Antennas" where he goes into several sub-topics.

I think the ideas are based on resonance or frequency matching, but fascinating anyway.

[Centraflow]

Welcome K

There are 4 licensed radio operators here as far as the ones I know, myself being one "uk and Spain". For a short antenna to be wide band would certainly be interesting, it would have to have an electric near field all of the time, short antennas normally are magnetic near field and very narrow banded.

Is it a loaded antenna in any form?

Regards

Mike

[Allcanadian]

Mike

For a short antenna to be wide band would certainly be interesting, it would have to have an electric near field all of the time, short antennas normally are magnetic near field and very narrow banded.

It's not common knowledge but a short "antenna" or any object can be used as a full spectrum EM receiver. Moray used a large electric field as a pseudo-surface area at which point a physically small antenna can have a field which is extremely large. The obvious hurdle then becomes coupling as our antenna can have a surface potential upwards of 30-100kV. You can't use a transformer because the current is small, it's limited in frequency and it's not sensitive enough. You can't use a capacitor for the same reasons nor diode/rectifiers with large thresholds which leaves many with an interesting dilemma.

Tesla had similar thoughts and speculated that if the fine metal particles of the coherer he was using at the time could be levitated there sensitivity would have few limitations. The slightest disturbance of any kind would set them in motion, nanotechnology/metamaterials come to mind, and some inventors like Moray claimed to have picked up the voices of people miles away from there receivers. There would seem to be an entire area of receiver technology which was evolving rapidly then simply disappeared...

Regards
AC

[muDped]

K,

Would it be possible to provide us an illustration, a pictorial or a photo to show what the antenna looks like physically?

To be clear on what you've described about your antenna thus far; are you saying that it exhibits an essentially flat response up to approx. 30 MHz without any resonance?

If so, that is certainly an intriguing concept.

In the days of Radio Communications we did have aboard Naval Ships a Broadband Transmitting Antenna capable of very wide bandwidth and the ability to accommodate several transmitters at different frequencies simultaneously.

[K]

Much of this technology relates to the Casimir effect as a wave guide then enhanced by internal structures which further concentrates said guided waves. So there is a specific process involved as wave guides, concentrators then surface interfaces onto the conductors. Many people have problems wrapping there mind around such complex systems and energy scavenging, such is life. In my opinion the better option is to build a working technology then offer it for sale at which point people can take it or leave it.

I have heard of many devices and read countless lectures/patents in my travels. T.H.Moray started out building energy concentrating structures then moved onto self-exciting amplifiers similar to that found in crystal radio's. Much of his work initially related to zero threshold or lossless rectification allowing efficiencies most can only dream about. ALD is now making the EPAD, zero-gate threshold mosfets which might help with power conversion in your device.

Regards
AC

-I agree with you about selling working technology. I have bootstrapped this project so far and gotten closer to a product that no only works as described, but lasts for many, many years. I am at a $tage where i need automation to get the tolerances down and consistency up, so i will be going back to full time work next week to fill the war chest again.
-This is the type of information that helps. T.H.Moray has a vastly diffent designs to me, so no prior art there. The zero-gate threshold mosfets may be very useful to me.

For the lower radio frequency bands below say 30MHz (the HF band and below), the usefulness of the antenna would be largely based on its efficiency or sensitivity. In plain terms, the level of signal it can capture in comparison to a traditional 1/4 wave whip antenna for example. If it is in the same ballpark, then that would be of great interest.

Would it be correct to assume the antenna also works as well in reverse for transmitting?

I would assume you have heard of Bill Beaty and read his articles, one on "Energy Sucking Radio Antennas Short Version", and the other on "Energy Sucking Radio Antennas" where he goes into several sub-topics.

I think the ideas are based on resonance or frequency matching, but fascinating anyway.

-I will put the 30MHz comparison test on the to-do list.
-I actually have not tested transmitting yet. when i have access to the testing equiptment again this will be the first thing i do.
-Bill beaty is new to me, i am going to need to re-read this several times. it appears potentially relevent to this technology.

Is it a loaded antenna in any form?

Regards
Mike

-There is no coil of any type.

Would it be possible to provide us an illustration, a pictorial or a photo to show what the antenna looks like physically?

To be clear on what you've described about your antenna thus far; are you saying that it exhibits an essentially flat response up to approx. 30 MHz without any resonance?

If so, that is certainly an intriguing concept.

In the days of Radio Communications we did have aboard Naval Ships a Broadband Transmitting Antenna capable of very wide bandwidth and the ability to accommodate several transmitters at different frequencies simultaneously.

-I will include a low resolution image of four 80mm x 80mm cells, two are symetrical and two are asymetrical. These will be the next for testing, they are hermetically sealed in a clear resin. I would have included higher definition except my fingerprints would be visible.
-Testing from 1KHZ to 10MHz there is a flat response observed. No resonance was obeserved within these frequencies, but that is not to say there isnt a resonance at a different frequency no yet tested.

The test results in the opening post are from cells of 20mm x 70mm with the asymetrical design ( similar to top right side of picture).

[poynt99]

I work in radio and have access to the associated test equipment.

Could probably test your antenna's reception up to a few GHz.

[K]

I work in radio and have access to the associated test equipment.

Could probably test your antenna's reception up to a few GHz.

I am interested, and have sent you a PM.

[poynt99]

K,

Should be a relatively straight forward test.

btw, what was used as the transmitter and transmitting antenna for your 1kHz ~ 10MHz tests? And what was the test setup configuration?

[K]

btw, what was used as the transmitter and transmitting antenna for your 1kHz ~ 10MHz tests? And what was the test setup configuration?

We used an adjustable sine wave generator running thru a coil. the signal was recorded on a digital oscilloscope.

[F6FLT]

Hi K,

Normally the name "antenna" stands for the ability to pick up a radiated electromagnetic wave. If the coil connected to your generator is less than one wavelength away, then we have a near field coupling, we cannot yet speak of an antenna. Hence my question:
How far from the antenna was the coil of your generator? Is it near field or far field? This distinction is essential to characterize an antenna.

Did you check the pickup power of your antenna by comparing it with ordinary antennas?
Did you test its directionality and polarization?

I have the CST modeling software, on which I have done hundreds of antenna models and simulations. If you can provide an accurate geometrical description of the elements and their electrical nature (resistance, permittivity, permeability...), I can probably model it and we could then simulate it.

[K]

Hi K,

Normally the name "antenna" stands for the ability to pick up a radiated electromagnetic wave. If the coil connected to your generator is less than one wavelength away, then we have a near field coupling, we cannot yet speak of an antenna. Hence my question:
How far from the antenna was the coil of your generator? Is it near field or far field? This distinction is essential to characterize an antenna.

Did you check the pickup power of your antenna by comparing it with ordinary antennas?
Did you test its directionality and polarization?

I have the CST modeling software, on which I have done hundreds of antenna models and simulations. If you can provide an accurate geometrical description of the elements and their electrical nature (resistance, permittivity, permeability...), I can probably model it and we could then simulate it.

-with the oscilloscope we had available we recorded the 60Hz from the power lines, and multiple radio stations, i belive this qualifies as far field.
-The pickup power comparison was not recorded, but the efficiencies are lower with the crude prototype. Interestingly what was also observed was when the sine wave generator's 0 line was moved to +1 or -1 the classic antenna would reflect this change in the scope readout. When this experiment was repeated on my technology the scope readout remained at baseline 0 with the sine wave generator at either +1 or -1. I am not sure what this means yet but i assume it is important.
-Directionality and polarisation have not been tested yet.
-I appreciate this offer, but for now i will take a rain check. Thankyou

[F6FLT]

-with the oscilloscope we had available we recorded the 60Hz from the power lines, and multiple radio stations, i belive this qualifies as far field.

For radio stations, it's of course far field, not for 60 Hz (the wavelength is 5000 Km).

-The pickup power comparison was not recorded, but the efficiencies are lower with the crude prototype. Interestingly what was also observed was when the sine wave generator's 0 line was moved to +1 or -1 the classic antenna would reflect this change in the scope readout. When this experiment was repeated on my technology the scope readout remained at baseline 0 with the sine wave generator at either +1 or -1. I am not sure what this means yet but i assume it is important.

I don't understand what it means either, but that's because I don't understand what you mean. 
Diagrams, explanations, measurements, pictures of experiments... would be welcome otherwise I don't know how the group could intervene. Thanks.

[K]

For radio stations, it's of course far field, not for 60 Hz (the wavelength is 5000 Km).
I don't understand what it means either, but that's because I don't understand what you mean. 
Diagrams, explanations, measurements, pictures of experiments... would be welcome otherwise I don't know how the group could intervene. Thanks.

So picking up radio stations means it is recieving far field, over 10x the wave length, meaning it is an antenna.

Is the word i am searching for amplitude? When you look at the pictures on the first post there is a number 2 in an arrow, this is the line i am talking about. when the amplitude on the sine wave generator is moved to +1 or -1 the antenna output doesnt move from 0. I hope this makes sense.

-Im learning as i go, thanks for your input.

[F6FLT]

Hi K,

Sorry for my late reply, I don't have much time at the moment.
In your 1st post, I see a lot of curves, but I don't know what they represent.

Note that receiving radio is not necessarily a sign of an efficient antenna. For example, see in the attached picture the radio spectrum between 5 and 14 MHz that I now receive with my SDR (https://www.sdrplay.com/rspdx/) connected to a PC and a small antenna, with SDR# software.
The white peaks are radio signals, the largest of which are broadcast, e.g. around 12 MHz.  And the antenna is only 35 cm long and inside the house, a very bad antenna, yet you can see the signals very well. Even the smallest piece of wire can be used as a radio antenna.
There are cheap ways to receive a radio spectrum, at least for frequencies >25 MHz, see https://www.rtl-sdr.com/about-rtl-sdr/.  I encourage all FE researchers who handle high frequencies and want to know the spectrum of their signals and the levels, to use them, because the spectra on scopes are usually insufficient.
That' s what you would need to specify the sensitivity of your antenna and whether it is really effective. Only measurements can indicate an efficient antenna.