New antennas, plasma tubes

2007/12/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Materialak
• Teknologia

At the University of Tennessee they have developed a special antenna capable of receiving and broadcasting radio waves. It is a tube that, instead of being metallic, contains an ionized gas (plasma) inside, similar to fluorescent tubes. The new antenna has certain advantages over conventional metal antennas: it can be smaller and does not suffer interference, as it does not respond to frequency signals higher than the one needed to work (normally high frequency signals are used to produce interference). Its drawback is that it needs more energy than the metal antenna. Therefore, at the moment it will not involve a revolution in technology.