Radiation patterns of a slotted-cylinder antenna in the presence of an inhomogeneous lossy plasma

A method is presented for calculating the equatorial patterns of slot antennas on a conducting cylinder coated with a plasma which is inhomogeneous in a direction radially outward from the cylinder. The procedure consists of separating the wave equation into real and imaginary parts, and numerically integrating between appropriate boundary conditions. The solutions are coefficients of the Fourier Series which express the nature of the far-field pattern. Results are presented which demonstrate the desirability of this approach to predict signal attenuation of antennas in a plasma environment.