3 ms·
When I was at university, there was a final year undergraduate project that used similar technology. In this case, the student was trying to build a passive ra
by femto 13y ago
When I was at university, there was a final year undergraduate project that used similar technology. In this case, the student was trying to build a passive radar jammer, which modulated the reflected radar signal in a way that the driver of a car could select what speed they wanted to appear on a traffic radar.
The method was to build a corner reflector out of three orthogonal conducting sheets, but to connect one of the sheets to ground via a PIN diode switch. By turning the diode on and off, the reflection coefficient of the corner reflector could be modulated, in turn modulating the reflected signal.
- jevinskie 13y agoDo you have a link? That is fascinating! Did it end up working?
- femto 13y agoI don't have a link. It got written up as an undergraduate thesis in about 1991, but as far as I know the University of Sydney doesn't keep copies of such documents. I'm not sure what the outcome was, though it must have gotten to a certain point of success, since I've memories of a car driving around with a corner reflector on it. The same student was experimenting with using a plasma as the modulated reflector, but that one ended when he connected the wrong end of the vacuum pump to his gear, accidentally pressurised it, and blew it up!