ANTENNA DEVELOPMENT FOR MULTIFUNCTIONAL ARMOR APPLICATIONS USING EMBEDDED SPIN-TORQUE NANO-OSCILLATOR (STNO) AS A MICROWAVE DETECTOR

Recent advances in spintronics resulted in the development of a new class of radiation-resistant nano-sized microwave devices - spin-torque nano-oscillators (STNO). To use these novel nano-scale devices in wireless communications system as either microwave sources or detectors it is necessary to develop antennas coupled to STNO and providing efficient radiation and reception of microwave radiation. We demonstrate that it is possible to design antennas of a sub-wavelength size that have sufficiently high efficiency to be successfully used in spintronic communication devices. A coplanar antenna has the best performance characteristics, because its impedance could be easily matched with the impedance of nano-scale spintronic devices. We developed prototype spintronic devices with matched coplanar antennas (oscillators and radar detectors) which could be embedded into armor, thereby improving the survivability of the antennas as well as reducing the visual signature of antennas on military vehicles.