Distinguished Professor Yahya Rahmat-Samii’s Review Paper Appeared on the Cover Page of an IEEE Magazine.

Distinguished Professor Yahya Rahmat-Samii’s Review Paper Appeared on the Cover Page of an IEEE Magazine.

Distinguished Professor Yahya Rahmat-Samii’s paper entitled, “Reflector Antenna Developments: APerspective on the Past, Present, and Future”, appeared on the cover page of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society Magazine, Vol. 57, pp. 85-95, April 2015. In this paper, developments of reflector antennas from the ancient past to the Renaissance to World War II and, finally, to the present, are presented in a concise fashion. The paper includes topics such as, ancient legend and Archimedes’ weapon, early optical telescopes in astronomy, WWII and radar, radio telescopes, unfurable and mesh reflector antennas, etc. The magazine cover page shows an artist’s rendition of the NASA Soil Moisture Active and Passive (SMAP) satellite mission, which was successfully launched from the Vandenberg Air Force Base on 1/31/2015 to study a critical element of the global water cycle, namely, soil moisture. An important aspect of the overall system was the RF design of the 6-m mesh offset-feed reflector antenna which was originally provided by Professor Rahmat-Samii and subsequently optimized by the JPL team. The antenna and boom assembly were built by Northrop-Grumman Astro Aerospace. The antenna and its feed assembly rotate at approximately 15 rpm creating a ground swath of about 1000 KM wide. It is perceived that the data produced by this highly sophisticated instrument will assist various aspects of remote sensing of the earth from space at L-band radiometers and radar frequencies. Another recent paper co-authored by Professor Rahmat-Samii appeared in the March 2015 issue of this magazine covering the topic “Array Antenna Developments: A Perspective on the Past, Present, and Future”.