ON THE WIDE-BAND CW ILLUMINATION OF LARGE-SCALE SYSTEMS - PART II - THE RHOMBIC ILLUMINATOR

The Phillips Laboratory has recently designed and constructed a contin uous wave illuminator for studying the responses of large-scale system s subject to vertically or horizontally polarized electromagnetic stre sses incident from the horizontal. The illuminator is developed by a n onuniform two-wire transmission line oriented over the system under te st, When the wires are driven from a common mode voltage with respect to the ground a vertically polarized electric field is generated and w hen the wires are driven from equal but opposite voltages a horizontal ly polarized electric field is developed. The structure is called the rhombic illuminator since the wire configuration is very similar to th e rhombic antenna. In order to illustrate the use of the illuminator, data are presented for the illumination field and for the response of an illuminated aircraft recorded at the Phillips Laboratory.