Student-led tutorials 5EPB0 ‘EM II’

SLT-D

May 23th 2023

If you have inspiration for an EM-related topic that could be used for an SLT such as, for
instance, a question about the latest aerospace engineering communication protocol, please do
not hesitate to contact us. We cannot promise anything, but we will look into the possibilities
to create a question around your favorite topic.

Philosophy
1. (a) In SLT-A, you worked with DC pulses bouncing up and down a transmission line.
The voltage distributions on the line at certain time instances were calculated by
simply shifting the pulses and summing the amplitudes. But from the lectures,
you learned that the wave amplitudes carry a location-dependent compensator
exp(−jkz). Where was the compensator in SLT-A?

(b) At a material-material boundary, the tangential electric fields are equal ET 1 = ET 2 .

This has to do with the fact that the tangential electric fields cannot ”jump”. Ex-
plain in your own words why this is the case. Hint: most vector fields in physics
have to be continuous unless there is a reason for it, like a physical factor that
compensates the jump.

(c) Tangential magnetic fields, however, can jump. How is that possible?

(d) What is the voltage standing wave ratio? Explain in your own words (not just the
formula).

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 A spherical PEC in vacuum

PEC

ε0 , µ 0

ax
az
ay

Figure 1: A PEC sphere with radius A is placed at the origin in a uniform electric field
oriented towards the +z-direction. Note that the influence of the PEC sphere on the field
has not been taken into account in this image. You will have to determine that by yourself
in this exercise.

2. In this question, we revisit the (hopefully) well-known boundary conditions. Consider

the following: a spherical perfect electric conductor (PEC) is placed in vacuum in a
time-invariant uniform electric field E = E0 az , see Figure 1.

(a) Describe the normal an of the PEC sphere in Cartesian coordinates. Note: because
the field is incident from another medium, the normal is directed into the sphere
(see Section 1.2.1 of the reader).

(b) Show that the normal incident electric field as a function of the spatial coordinates
2
x, y and z EN (x, y, z) is equal to E0 zxax +E 0 zyay +E0 z az
x2 +y 2 +z 2
.

(c) Show that the tangential incident electric field as a function of the spatial coordi-
nates x, y and z ET (x, y, z) is equal to −E0 xzax −Ex02yza
2 2
y +E0 (x +y )az
+y 2 +z 2
.

(d) We now study the behavior of the PEC in the plane y = 0. Write down the relevant
boundary conditions regarding the normal and tangential electric fields in a PEC.

(e) Make a sketch of the field lines and the charges on the sphere in the plane y = 0.
Describe what happens.

(f) Explain what would happen if the PEC would be exposed to a uniform time-
harmonic electric field rather than to a time-invariant one.

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 Poynting Vector
3. A radio station on earth emits 10 kW power isotopically above the ground at frequency
of 100 MHz.

(a) To begin with the exercise, Poynting’s vector must be defined, along with its unit
and what it represents?

(b) What is the average magnitude of the Poynting vector at a satellite 100 km away
from the transmitting antenna? Find the electric and magnetic field amplitude
detected by this satellite.

(c) Find the total energy incident normally on the satellite camera of size 10 cm x 10
cm per 10 min?

(d) At what distance in the same direction would the signal have the same maximum
field strength if the transmitter output power were increased to 100 kW?

(e) What average force would the transmitting signal exert on a completely absorb-
ing surface of radius of 1m oriented perpendicular to the transmitter-satellite line.
(Hint: when EM wave is absorbed completely by a surface, the momentum is also
transferred to the surface which is responsible for radiation pressure.)

(f) Assume transmitter is highly directional, emitting only in x-direction; and a per-
fectly conducting sheet is placed parallel to it in yz plane at x = 2m such that signal
is fully reflected. Find the intensity of the em signal at a distance x = 0.5 m? Draw
the electric and magnetic field produced between the transmitter and conducting
sheet.

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 Is the cake a lie?
Recently, you took a new summer job as prison ward in Alcatraz. It is your job to make
sure that no contraband reaches the insides of the building and keep the good fairly
decent name of the prison high. However, some inmates appear to be quite creative.
You quickly notice the large amount of pies being sent to prisoners by mail and you
immediately suspect that some of these cakes contain illegal substances.
Cutting one of the cakes for inspection recently resulted in a row between you and a
prisoner, who accused you of eating from the delicious high-quality pie made by his lov-
ing mother (not true of course - it was way too salty). Furthermore, an accident with
an exploding X-ray scanner resulted in the tragic loss of three inmates and four other
ones obtaining superpowers. Hence, you turn to the scattering parameters of EM-waves
to inspect the pies.

V2− Z0
+
Z0 V1

Figure 2: The ports with the dish-under-test (DUT), which is connected to two sources
which can both generate and measure signals (hence, the setup can measure S-parameters).
The cake is assumed to behave as a transmission line. Image from [1].

The next questions are focused on describing the behavior of your device or circuit
through some experiments when you do not know what is in it on forehand. Figure 2

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 shows the circuit your are studying as a two-port transmission line.The incoming V1+
and V2− and outgoing voltage waves V1− and V2+ of a two-port device can be described
through [ −] [ ][ ]
V1 S11 S12 V1+
= , (1)
V2+ S21 S22 V2−
with Spq the scatter parameter from channel p to channel q.

4. (a) What does a high S11 mean? And a high S21 ?

(b) Does the scatter parameter S11 relate to the reflection or transmission coefficients?
And is a high S11 mean a high or low reflection/transmission coefficient? And the
S21 ?

(c) You notice in the first few pies that you inspect that the S12 and the S21 are equal.
What does this imply?

(d) You detected a sample where S12 ̸= S21 . You immediately suspect the pie contains
a bomb. Why?

How do you do fellow kids?

5. While scrolling on your couch, you decide you want to determine which is the best social
media platform to watch short videos/reels, Instagram Reels or Youtube Shorts. There
is only one way to do this, and that is not by watching videos as it is clear that Youtube
Shorts is the winner. No, you ask their engineers to design an antenna and you deter-
mine which of them accepts the most amount of power.

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The transmission line has a 100 W time harmonic source with a 50 Ω source impedance,
which is connected to lossless 50 Ω transmission line whose length is ℓ3 = π2 cm with a
propagation constant, k3 = 100m−1 . This line is connected to a pair of antennas.

k3 = 100m−1 k1
Z03 = 50Ω Z01 = 100Ω Iℓ

Z 02
50Ω

=
ℓ2

100
=
100 − 100jΩ

Ω,
λ 2/

k2
8
Vs

π λ1
ℓ3 = 2
cm ℓ1 = 8
cm
z=0 z = ℓ3 z = ℓ3 + ℓ1

Figure 3: Transmission Line for Exercise 5

Instagram keeps it simple, just like their users, and therefore it uses a high line impedance
(100Ω) with a low impedance antenna (0Ω).
Youtube Shorts makes use of the same high 100Ω line, however they were unable to de-
sign a perfectly matching antenna which meant that the termination had an impedance
of 100 − j100Ω.

(a) What is the input impedance of the Insta Antenna, looking from z = ℓ3 ?

(b) What is the input impedance of ℓ1 and ZL , looking from z = ℓ3 ?

(c) Calculate the combined input impedance and draw a simplified circuit which in-
cludes your new impedance.

(d) Determine the input impedance as seen by the source

(e) How much power is dissipated in the antenna from Instagram Reels?

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 (f) How much power is dissipated in the antenna of Youtube?

(g) The story around it is, of course, non-relevant and mostly distracting you from the
essence. It is however important to be able to extract the important information
from the text. With only the ”Youtube antenna” connected, the input impedance
would be totally different, however when adding the second transmission line, the
results looked much better. How is the structure from Instagram called?

Circuit Theory
Credits: Nick Verstegen
When working on RF PCB’s, it is always a challenge on whether traces should be con-
sidered as transmission lines, or whether their characteristic impedance can be ignored.
In general, there is a rule of thumb which mentions that TL’s, with a length smaller than
1/10λ can be treated following circuit theory. In this exercise we will discover how this
works using Fig. 4. Assume we have a transmission line with increasing characteristic
impedance, and a certain load impedance, ZL

Zin Zin2 Zin1

ZN ZN −1 Z... Z2 Z1
Vs 75Ω
ln ln−1 l... l2 l1

Figure 4: General transmission line

6. (a) With the situation in Fig. 5. Approximate the input impedance as function of ZL
using equation 3.41c from the reader, assuming that ℓ << λ. Hint: Assume that
ℓ <<<<< λ.

Zin3

Z = ... Z... = ...Ω Z3 = 52Ω Z2 = 51Ω Z1 = 50Ω

Vs ZN = ... N −1 75Ω
ln ln−1 l... l3 l2 l1

Figure 5: Transmission line for (b) onwards

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 (b) But is the assumption correct? Lets say we have a cascade of transmission lines
with a length of 1 mm, and a frequency of 1 GHz (λ = 300 mm). With a load
impedance of 75 Ω and with an increasing characteristic impedance, what is the
input impedance, Zin1 if you calculate it?

(c) What is the input impedance Zin2 and Zin3 and the corresponding reflection coef-
ficient if we assume that Zload = 75Ω?

(d) What is the main takeaway?

References
[1] https://cdn1-www.playstationlifestyle.net/assets/uploads/2010/11/feature-Portal-
Cake.jpg.

[2] IT’IS tissue properties database, DOI: 10.13099/VIP21000-04-0, https://itis.swiss/

virtual-population/tissue-properties/downloads/database-v4-0/.

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