volume | PIER Journals

Abstract

Non-Foster matching circuits are those that can function as negative capacitors or inductors, and can thus overcome the gain bandwidth limitation of passive matching circuits for antennas. This paper presents a non-Foster matching circuit (NFC) for a very low frequency (VLF) receiver loop antenna. The bandwidth of the antenna was improved by 383%, and the average gain was improved in most bands compared to a passive matching circuit (over 15-30 kHz). In contrast to circuits reported in other publications, the signal to noise ratio (SNR) of the passive matching network performed better than the non-Foster matching network. To analyze this phenomenon, a noise model was developed for the simplified balanced NFC, and noise analysis was conducted between the non-Foster and passive matching networks, which indicates that the non-Foster matching circuits cannot provide a better SNR performance than the passive matching circuits under low noise figure level receiver conditions.

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Dr. Ya-Long Yan

Prof. Chao Liu

Dr. Yin-Hui Dong

Dr. Huaning Wu