Effect of sheath thickness on the propagation constant of electromagnetic waves propagating along thin plasma layer coated metallic surface

Solving or mitigating the blackout problem suffered by hypersonic vehicles as they re-enter the atmosphere is essential for the smooth communication of hypersonic vehicles. An antenna–sheath–plasma layer configuration is proposed, whose analytical results indicate that the attenuation of the wave mode can be reduced significantly through optimizing the sheath thickness between the hypersonic vehicle antenna and the surrounding plasma layer. Detailed investigations show that because the wave frequency is greater than the plasma frequency, i.e., ωpe < ω, there exists great influence of the sheath thickness parameter δ on the propagation constant for the m = 1, 2, 3 modes as δ ∈ (0.01, 1) and for the m = 0 mode as δ > 1; for the ωpe > ω case, δ imposes a significant effect on the propagation constant for the m = 0, 2, 3 modes as δ ∈ (0.1, 2) and for the m = 1 mode as δ < 1; in addition, it shows that the attenuation constant for the m = 1 mode is always non-zero, which implies that the blackout problem is mainly caused by the m = 1 mode when ωpe > ω.