An Experimental System for the Measurement of Electromagnetic Propagation on Curved Surfaces

Practical measurements of electromagnetic propagation around the circumference of large cylinders are difficult due to the dimensions of the configuration. This paper presents a new measurement approach where a large cylinder was replaced with a small section of a curved surface, whilst maintaining the large radius. Two unconventional wideband horn antennas were designed and manufactured and to mitigate the unwanted edge effects, a time domain gating technique was used. This setup allows for the measurement of different types of materials, such as metamaterials, that can either support or reduce propagation along a curved surface. The entire setup was modelled using a full-wave electromagnetic simulator and experimentally verified.