Open AccessSecure Electromagnetic Buildings Using Slow Phase-Switching Frequency-Selective Surfaces
Author(s) -
Jiayin Roberts,
Kenneth Lee Ford,
Jonathan M. Rigelsford
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
ieee transactions on antennas and propagation
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.652
H-Index - 200
eISSN - 1558-2221
pISSN - 0018-926X
DOI - 10.1109/tap.2015.2499773
Subject(s) - fields, waves and electromagnetics , aerospace , transportation , components, circuits, devices and systems
The concept of a secure electromagnetic building (SEB) which can successfully prohibit wireless communications is presented. Wireless security is achieved using a slow phaseswitching technique and can be realized by time-varying the transmission properties of a frequency-selective surface (FSS) to increase the bit error rate (BER) of the unwanted signal. Results are presented which demonstrate that a technique of phase switching at rates much lower than the baseband data rate can be used successfully. The system has been implemented using a reconfigurable dual-polarized dual layer FSS incorporating varactor diodes where over 100° of phase change can be achieved for voltage changes of ±0 - 3V . A vector signal analyzer was used to evaluate the BER performance of the system for a GSM signal operating at 2 GHz. BERs are shown to be as high as 36% which are sufficient to successfully prohibit wireless communication. The solution is also shown to be robust over a wide range of incidence angles, which is important for real-world applications where the location of the prohibited wireless source may be unknown or mobile. Furthermore, as the system is reconfigurable, the building can be switched between secure and nonsecure modes.