The Performance Evaluation of Capacitive Antenna with Various Structures and Permittivity Values

This paper evaluates the capacitive antenna performance as a lightning sensor. The performance is evaluated by looking at two aspects, antenna structures and the background permittivity value of the antenna. Two experiments were carried out, Experiment A - using two different structure antennas, one with its Bayonet Neill-Concelman (BNC) connector's core direct touching the top plate (DBNC) while the other was connected via single core wires (WBNC), capturing the electric field (E-field) generated by the small spark at a distance of 1 meter away from both antennas. Furthermore, both capacitive antennas with top plates directly soldered to their BNC cores were used to study their performance with and without being covered by plastic (dielectric constant of 2.25) during Experiment B. The result from Experiment A showed that WBNC has different onset polarity and significant decreased in amplitude of the signals captured compared to DBNC (mean ratio is 1.095 with range between 0.5838 and 4.528). Meanwhile, Experiment B shows that a comparable average ratio of 0.7835 and 0.7447 during the measurement where antenna Awc with and without the presence of plastic cover respectively.