Performance of Dipole Antenna in Underwater Wireless Sensor Communication

The technology about undersea sensing and networking using electromagnetic wave has become one of the key topics in marine science and engineering. In such applications, the proper antenna types will significantly affect the performance of electromagnetic wave transmission in seawater or across the seawater-to-air interface. Therefore, in this paper, the model of dipole antennas in a three layered conducting media (air-seawater-sea bottom) is built. The electromagnetic fields in air produced by different kinds of undersea dipole antennas are derived. The field expressions in air with the form of Sommerfeld integral are rapidly and efficiently evaluated by the fast Fourier transform method. The results show that the performance of horizontal electric dipole is superior to that of vertical electric dipole, and the performance of magnetic dipole is superior to that of electric dipole. The approach and conclusions in this paper can provide a theoretical basis and technical foundations for the selection of antenna type when the electromagnetic wave is used for data transmission between seawater and air.