Rectangular and zonal slots on a sphere with a backing shell: theory and experiment

A rectangular slot antenna on a spherical cavity with a conducting backing shell is investigated rigorously. The Green's function approach is used to formulate an integral equation for the magnetic slot current, which is solved using the moment method. Two previously developed methods to evaluate the admittance integrals are used and compared with each other. Both methods use recurrence formulas and analytical integration to speed the computation. The slot and cavity resonances of the structure are studied. In particular, two simple formulas for the first two natural resonances of the cavity structure are given. The effects of the shell size, slot length, and cavity dielectric constant on the input impedance are discussed. Measurements were carried out to verify the theory, and very good agreement between theory and experiment is obtained. In addition, the zonal slot antenna on a spherical cavity with a conducting backing shell is studied. The effect of the shell radius on the input impedance is investigated and, again, very good agreement between theory and experiment is found.