HPM-Specific Antenna Issues

While most antenna engineering focuses on communications and radar signals with known power and frequency requirements, High Power Electromagnetic (HPEM) systems present a design challenge with non-cooperative targets and starkly different criteria for "success". Therefore, the optimal design space presents with substantial differences relative to conventional antenna engineering and merits attention to specific details and solutions. This talk will provide a survey level overview of how HPEM antenna requirements differ from those of more conventional communications or radar systems and how the current state of the art attempts to address these issues.

Speaker and Presenter Information

Major Timothy Wolfe, PhD., graduated from Boston University in 2011 with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering, and commissioned into the U.S. Air Force through AFROTC Detachment 355. He completed his M.S. in Electrical Engineer at the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) in 2015. His career outside of academic research has included a variety of assignments ranging from technical intelligence analysis to program management. He has served as Principal Investigator, Pulsed Power Modeling Simulation for the Numerical Simulations Program and Deputy Program Manager, Aero Effects and Beam Control Program at the Air Force Research Laboratory Directed Energy Directorate, Kirtland AFB, NM. In 2018, he was accepted into the Purdue Military Research Initiative on an AFIT scholarship, graduating with a PhD in Electrical Engineering in 2021. He has since served as an assistant professor of electrical engineering at AFIT, with teaching and research covering solid state microelectronics, RF antennas and propagation, and statistical analysis. He is now also serving as the division chief of electrical engineering in charge of curriculum and personnel management within the department.