Loop Antenna at ~60 kHz
El 06-11-14 10:37, rickman escribió:
On 11/6/2014 2:23 AM, Jeff Liebermann wrote: On Wed, 05 Nov 2014 20:50:31 -0500, rickman wrote: Not sure why you can't discuss this in the right thread of this group. I've posted my reply to your post in the loop antenna thread. Because I prefaced my comments by mentioning that a 60 KHz loop is on my "agenda". I guess that's a bit vague. What I meant to say was that I'm not very well read on the technology involved, a total clutz with LTspice, and I haven't built another loop so I can measure how it acts. In other words, I'm not ready to discuss it (unless you can tolerate my guesswork). I'm happy bouncing things off you. I did some reading on this back a year or so ago and feel like I got a lot, but not enough to really optimize it for my application. One thing I was missing was an understanding of the radiation resistance which I now have a formula for and can include in my LTspice simulation when I get to it. I don't quite have a feel for radiation resistance in terms of its effect on the receive antenna, but I'm sure that will come once I look at the equations. I expect it will be small, hopefully small compared to the wire resistance. One thing that gave me fits early on is the calculation of the loop inductance. Seems there are a lot of equations out there and most of the sources don't talk about where they got them or what they assume. I finally got one from Lundin that seems pretty good and covers the widest range of coils I might be using. First, I'm not sure what you are talking about connecting high impedance antennas to condensation and salt fog. If you are transmitting, then maybe you could get such high voltages as to attract microscopic objects, but this is a receiver design. Well, a 33:1 turns ratio is a 1000:1 impedance ratio. Using 75 ohms as the coax cable and the characteristic impedance, that's 75K ohms. Forget 75 ohms. There is no cable. The antenna connects directly to the receiver circuit through the transformer. The characteristics of the antenna are defined by the inductance of the loop and the resonance with the tuning capacitor and the Q. In general, board leakage and conduction problems start around 100K (depending on trace spacing etc), so I suspect you can make it work, at least on the bench. 100k? I will be using up to 10 Megohm parts but even that is not very sensitive to board leakage unless you leave a lot of rosin on the board and it collects dust for a few years. However, in the typical marine atmosphere, with ionic crud in the water, there will be leakage issues. I don't recall the typical sheet resistivity for a standing salt water puddle on a PCB, but I suspect it will be a problem. I won't be in salt spray, it will be in my living room. Still, any aquatic electronics would be in a sealed enclosure. Of course, you can conformal coat the board, hermetically seal the package, wax dip it, or pot the antenna amplifier in epoxy to avoid the problem. However, the favored method is to design with low impedances and not create new problems with conformal coatings and sealed boxes. There are also some PCB layout tricks that will help. For example, here's part of a book on PCB design issues: http://www.analog.com/library/analogdialogue/archives/43-09/edch%2012%20pc%20issues.pdf See Pg 12-15 to 12-19 on "Static PCB Effects" with examples of PCB guard patterns. I am familiar with guarding, but that is not going to be needed with an antenna. The voltage will be very low level even when the Q is optimized, so no appreciable leakage currents. Incidentally, my unofficial test for decent design was to immerse the radio in a bucket of genuine San Francisco Bay salt water. If the board continued to operate normally, it passes. If not, I get to spend the evening with the bucket and a megohmmeter looking for the culprit. If you're building this loop as an academic exercise, you can probably ignore all the aforementioned comments on PCB leakage. However, if you're going to sell it, think carefully about such environment problems. I don't think it will ever see duty on a sea vessel. Also, the antenna is not high impedance, just the input to the receiver. The transformer I am looking at is a high turns ratio current sensor. It spans the right frequency range and is a nice compact package easy to mount on a PCB. Why not just make it a 40 KHz tuned xformer? You get the same impedance transformation with the added bonus of additional bandwidth reduction (increased Q) to eliminate as much atmospheric and man made noise as possible. It's also much less lossy than a broadband xformer. What would that entail? My main concern is lowering the Q because of the loading from the receiver input, especially with the change in impedance as reflected through the transformer. Well, you're stuck with matching the loop to the receiver input anyway, so there's no way around that with passive components. You can insert an emitter follower to do the impedance transformation. You aren't in tune with this design. The goal is to minimize power. There won't be a preamp of any kind unless absolutely required. Incidentally, the typical loaded Q for such loops seems to be around 100. Some claim 200 or more, but for small loops, 100 seems to be the target. At 40 KHz, that's a -3dB bandwidth of 200 Hz, which is rather wide for a 1Hz wide WWVB signal. You could probably increase the Q somewhat, mostly be reducing the resistive losses, but that might create drift and tuning accuracy problems. Higher Q is possible, but I suspect will require a much more rigid and beefy design. There is only so much that can be done to increase Q. The wire I am using in the antenna is already pushing the skin effect at 1 mm diameter. If I am reading the equations correctly increasing the number of turns on the loop does increase Q. I am currently looking at 8 turns (50 feet of RG-6) and may increase it to 100 feet (16 turns). But I've already built a support and 16 turns will be hard to add without a redesign. I think when I simulated it, I found the max signal strength came with a 25 or 33:1 turns ratio because with higher turns ratios the Q was spoiled enough to bring the voltage down at the receiver input. This simulation didn't include the effect of the radiation resistance, so I will need to add that in. I expect this will lower the Q as a starting point which means the affect from the receiver input loading will not be as significant, possibly making a higher turns ratio in the transformer more useful. I can't comment on that without seeing the design. Actually, I'm not sure seeing the design will help as I need to do some more reading before I can understand exactly how it works. The equations are pretty simply once I found them (and could trust I had the right ones). Lundin's formula for inductance of a solenoid L = N^2 * a * Correction Factor * μ0 N is the number of turns a is the loop radius in meters the correction factor based on the coil shape is a bit complex but comes to 3.3 ballpark with the loop shape used. μ0 is the permeability of free space Depending on what is in your "Correction Factor", I would expect a^2 isntead of "a" (coil radius). I also expected to see the length of the coil in the formula. He is the effective height of the antenna, an expression of the effectiveness of the antenna in converting the field into a voltage. He = 2pi * N * A / λ, ignoring the orientation factor cos θ. N is the number of turns A is the loop area in meters^2 λ is the wavelength of the 60 kHz signal Inductance and frequency get the reactance which when compared to the total loss resistance yields the Q. Multiply the effective height by the field strength (on the east coast it's ~100 uV from WWVB) to get the antenna voltage. Someone was trying to get me to use an equation based on the magnetic field but I believe once you combine the equations you get the same calculation. That someone was me, and you are right, results should be the same. Multiply by Q and the transformer ratio and you have the voltage at the receiver input. Wire resistance goes up with the product of N and a, or in other words the length of the cable. The loop inductance goes up with N^2 and a. Effective height goes up with N and a squared (area). So a bigger loop will get a larger signal but the same Q. Adding turns will get a larger signal *and* a higher Q. Obviously the size of the loop has an upper limit based on practicality, but more turns gets improved performance with less impact on the size. More turns (that is more copper/copper area) give higher Q, but there are other effects that will cause deviation from this reasoning. I still can't draw on a piece of paper what you have in mind, however you may search for coil/inductor design and Q factor together with names of researchers/experimenters (Medhurst, Nagaoka, Wheeler, Corum, etc). If you are able to make an LC circuit with Q say over 10.000 (10k), radiation resistance will have some influence. When discussing Q1000, size around 2 feet, forget radiation resistance, resistive loss dominates. -- Wim PA3DJS Please remove abc first in case of PM |
Loop Antenna at ~60 kHz
On 11/6/2014 9:48 AM, Wimpie wrote:
El 06-11-14 10:37, rickman escribió: On 11/6/2014 2:23 AM, Jeff Liebermann wrote: On Wed, 05 Nov 2014 20:50:31 -0500, rickman wrote: I think when I simulated it, I found the max signal strength came with a 25 or 33:1 turns ratio because with higher turns ratios the Q was spoiled enough to bring the voltage down at the receiver input. This simulation didn't include the effect of the radiation resistance, so I will need to add that in. I expect this will lower the Q as a starting point which means the affect from the receiver input loading will not be as significant, possibly making a higher turns ratio in the transformer more useful. I can't comment on that without seeing the design. Actually, I'm not sure seeing the design will help as I need to do some more reading before I can understand exactly how it works. The equations are pretty simply once I found them (and could trust I had the right ones). Lundin's formula for inductance of a solenoid L = N^2 * a * Correction Factor * μ0 N is the number of turns a is the loop radius in meters the correction factor based on the coil shape is a bit complex but comes to 3.3 ballpark with the loop shape used. μ0 is the permeability of free space Depending on what is in your "Correction Factor", I would expect a^2 isntead of "a" (coil radius). I also expected to see the length of the coil in the formula. It is not "my" correction factor, it is Lundin's. It is based on the ratio of loop diameter to coil length and the formula I used applies for diameters larger than the coil length. Here is the note in my spread sheet... Lundin's Formula for 2ab, Proc IEEE, Vol 73, No. 9, Sept 1985 If you google it I'm sure you can dig up all sorts of references. Of all the many inductance formulas I found none used the area rather than coil radius (not squared). Here is one for a single loop from http://www.ece.mcmaster.ca/faculty/n...s/L12_Loop.pdf The inductance of a single circular loop of radius a made of wire of radius b is L = μ a (ln(8a/b)-2) Notice the 'a' factor (loop radius) is not squared. When I did my research, Lundin's formula appeared to be the one that gave the best results over the largest range of coil diameter to length. It was also fairly simple to program in a spreadsheet. There is even one web page I found that discusses some of the attempts to do better which actually failed for various reasons. I found this very interesting. http://www.g3ynh.info/zdocs/magnetics/part_2.html He is the effective height of the antenna, an expression of the effectiveness of the antenna in converting the field into a voltage. He = 2pi * N * A / λ, ignoring the orientation factor cos θ. N is the number of turns A is the loop area in meters^2 λ is the wavelength of the 60 kHz signal Inductance and frequency get the reactance which when compared to the total loss resistance yields the Q. Multiply the effective height by the field strength (on the east coast it's ~100 uV from WWVB) to get the antenna voltage. Someone was trying to get me to use an equation based on the magnetic field but I believe once you combine the equations you get the same calculation. That someone was me, and you are right, results should be the same. Multiply by Q and the transformer ratio and you have the voltage at the receiver input. Wire resistance goes up with the product of N and a, or in other words the length of the cable. The loop inductance goes up with N^2 and a. Effective height goes up with N and a squared (area). So a bigger loop will get a larger signal but the same Q. Adding turns will get a larger signal *and* a higher Q. Obviously the size of the loop has an upper limit based on practicality, but more turns gets improved performance with less impact on the size. More turns (that is more copper/copper area) give higher Q, but there are other effects that will cause deviation from this reasoning. I still can't draw on a piece of paper what you have in mind, however you may search for coil/inductor design and Q factor together with names of researchers/experimenters (Medhurst, Nagaoka, Wheeler, Corum, etc). I have found most of those although more when looking for inductance formula rather than Q formula. If you are able to make an LC circuit with Q say over 10.000 (10k), radiation resistance will have some influence. When discussing Q1000, size around 2 feet, forget radiation resistance, resistive loss dominates. Ok, that is what I expected. Still, I want to add radiation resistance to my simulation just for completeness. It shouldn't be hard. It is just a bit more math to type in. If I get a Q of 10,000 (10k) I don't think the design would be usable. A degree or two of temperature drift and it would be out of tune. I would like to see a Q of over 100 though. -- Rick |
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