Exercise 5.6.15: Finding a beacon with a rotating loop

About the further exercises of Section 5.6

Twenty further exercises in the spirit of the problems, the worked examples and the home exercises, graded from easy to harder within two groups. Exercises 5.6.1–5.6.10 belong to the lecture: Exercises 5.6.1–5.6.2 are about phasors and the phase velocity, 5.6.3–5.6.5 about the complex permittivity and the wave number, 5.6.6–5.6.7 about the Helmholtz equation and 5.6.8–5.6.10 about power. Exercises 5.6.11–5.6.20 belong to the exercise lecture: reading time-harmonic fields, loops, mixers and receivers, power, and the medium found from measurements. They use only

u = Re {U e^{j ω t}}, sin θ = cos (θ - \frac{π}{2}), \frac{\partial}{\partial t} \to j ω, v_{p} = \frac{ω}{∣\nabla ϕ ∣}, λ = \frac{2 π}{β}, ε_{c} = ε - j \frac{σ}{ω} = ε^{'} - j ε^{''}, tan δ = \frac{ε ^{''}}{ε ^{'}}, k = ω μ ε_{c} = β - j α, \nabla^{2} E + k^{2} E = 0, \nabla \cdot E = 0 (source-free), \nabla \times E = - j ω μ H, \nabla \times H = j ω ε_{c} E, η = \frac{ω μ}{k} = \frac{μ}{ε _{c}}, emf = - \frac{d Φ}{d t},

and, from Section 6.1, the instantaneous and the complex Poynting vectors $P (t) = E (t) \times H (t)$ and $P_{c} = \frac{1}{2} E \times H^{*}$ , with $P_{a v} = Re {P_{c}}$ , and the time-harmonic Poynting relation

- \oint_{S} P_{c} \cdot d S - \int_{V} \frac{1}{2} E \cdot J_{i}^{*} d V = \int_{V} [\frac{1}{2} σ ∣ E ∣^{2} + j 2 ω (w_{m} - w_{e})] d V,

with the time-average energy densities $w_{e} = \frac{1}{4} ε ∣ E ∣^{2}$ and $w_{m} = \frac{1}{4} μ ∣ H ∣^{2}$ (real $ε$ , $μ$ ). For a wave $E_{0} e^{- j k \cdot r}$ every $\nabla$ becomes $- j k$ , so Faraday's law gives $H = k \times E / ω μ$ . A small loop of $N$ turns and area $A$ in a field $H$ of angular frequency $ω$ picks up an emf of amplitude $N ω μ ∣ H \cdot n ∣ A$ , with $n$ its normal.

Exercise 5.6.15

Finding a beacon with a rotating loop

A radio beacon at $f = 400 kHz$ sends a ground wave that arrives horizontally along $a_{k} = cos φ_{0} a_{x} + sin φ_{0} a_{y}$ , with $E = E_{0} a_{z}$ (vertical), $E_{0} = 100 μ V/m$ , and $H = a_{k} \times E / η_{0}$ . A vertical loop of $N = 40$ turns and radius $b = 15 cm$ turns about the $z$ -axis, and its normal is $n = cos ψ a_{x} + sin ψ a_{y}$ . (a) Find the emf amplitude as a function of $ψ$ . (b) For which $ψ$ is it zero, and what is its largest value? (c) The operator sets the loop $2^{\circ}$ off the null, or $2^{\circ}$ off the maximum: by how much does the reading change in each case? (d) A null is found at $ψ = 6 0^{\circ}$ . Where can the beacon be?

Try it yourself first.

cf. Home exercise 5.6.7