EE 3340 Lect.

21 21- 1
21. Reflection and Transmission of Plane EM Waves

We have relied on the analogy between waves on transmission lines and
free-space waves to explain concepts such as impedance and propagation
constants, and we will continue to use that analogy as we now discuss reflection
and transmission of uniform plane waves. Again, it is unusual to encounter ideal
plane waves in practice, but since they are so simple to deal with, you can learn
a lot about how real waves behave by studying the behavior of idealized uniform
plane waves.
Before we get into the math, I!ll show you some pictures that should help
you make the connection between transmission-line and free-space wave
transmission and reflection.
Fig. 21-1(a) shows a transmission line excited by a voltage source and
connected to another (semi-infinite) line that matches its (real) characteristic
impedance Z
0
. As the graphs of voltage and current magnitude show, both
magnitudes are constant all along the line (though they are both oscillating in
time at the frequency of the driving source). If the second line really goes to
infinity, no power is ever reflected and the load acts like a resistance R = Z
0
.
For a uniform plane wave, the situation that is analogous to Fig. 21-1 (a) is
Fig. 21-1 (b), which shows a plane wave traveling to the right (the +z direction) in
free space. We have shown a boundary between two regions of free space, but
EE 3340 Lect. 21 21- 2

Fig. 21-1. Reflection and transmission analogies, part 1.
EE 3340 Lect. 21 21- 3
just as with the transmission lines, the wave impedance of both regions is the
same, namely !
0
. Consequently, there is no reflection at the boundary and the
wave simply travels on its way to the right. If we observe the magnitudes of the
electric and magnetic fields, we find that they are also uniform with respect to the
direction of propagation, just as in the transmission-line case.
Now suppose we terminate the transmission line in a perfect short circuit
(R = 0) as shown in Fig. 21-1 (c). This imposes a boundary condition at the end
of the line, namely, V = 0. Accordingly, we have a standing wave on the line and
the voltage standing-wave ratio (VSWR) is infinite, meaning that the voltage goes
to zero at the end and every half-wavelength back from the end as well. The
current shows the same peak-and-trough pattern, but offset by a quarter
wavelength.
The plane-wave equivalent of a short circuit is a sheet made of a perfect
conductor. (In reality, copper or another good conductor will do nearly as well.)
This imposes the boundary condition that E
tan
= 0 at the reflecting plane,
analogous to the V = 0 condition at the end of the transmission line. As you
might expect, the plane wave is perfectly reflected at the conducting wall, and all
space in front of the wall is filled with two traveling waves of equal amplitude, one
going toward the wall and one returning. The result is a standing wave in which
the electric and magnetic fields vary over distance as shown. In particular, there
is a plane a half-wavelength away from the wall where the electric field is exactly

EE 3340 Lect. 21 21- 4

Fig. 21-2. Reflection and transmission analogies, part 2.
EE 3340 Lect. 21 21- 5
zero. And between that plane and the wall, a quarter-wavelength away from the
wall, the magnetic field is zero where the electric field is at a maximum.
What if a plane wave encounters a medium whose wave impedance is
different than that of free space, but not infinity or zero? This situation is
analogous to a transmission line feeding another line with a different impedance:
some of the incident wave will be transmitted and some will be reflected. In Fig.
21-2 (a), a transmission line feeds a second semi-infinite line whose
characteristic impedance Z
L
is higher than the first line!s impedance Z
0
. The
result is that the VSWR is between 1 and infinity, depending on the ratio of
impedances, and both voltage and current magnitudes vary along the line,
although not as extremely as they do in the case of a short.
The plane-wave analog of a high-impedance transmission line is a region
whose relative permeability
r
is greater than 1 and whose relative permittivity "
r

equals 1 (I don!t know of any such substance, but there may be one!). This is
shown in Fig. 21-2 (b). Since the wave impedance ! of a medium is
!
" = "
0

r
#
r
, (21-1)
this medium will have a wave impedance higher than that of air, so we will get the
same kind of standing waves we saw in the transmission-line case. The electric
field on the interface between air and the medium is higher than it would be in
free space, and the magnetic field is lower.
If we connect a transmission line to a semi-infinite line with a lower
characteristic impedance, we will again get standing waves, as Fig. 21-2 (c)
EE 3340 Lect. 21 21- 6
shows. The analogous medium to a low-impedance transmission line is one in
which the relative permeability is 1, but the relative permittivity "
r
is larger than 1.
Most dielectrics have this property, so the kind of reflections we will see in Fig.
21-2 (d) are typical of what you find at many dielectric interfaces: the electric
field is somewhat lower than in free space and the magnetic field is higher. Of
course, if the dielectric is not semi-infinite (none are!) you will have reflections
from the back side which will interact with the transmitted wave and make things
more complicated. But as long as the uniform-plane-wave model suffices, this
situation is exactly analogous to a terminated transmission line, and you can take
the same mathematical machinery we developed to find impedances in
transmission lines, and use it to find the ratio of electric to magnetic fields in a
plane wave.
Now that you see the analogy, we!ll do some of the math. For simplicity,
we will consider only the case of normal (perpendicular) incidence, meaning the
wave encounters a boundary at an angle of 90 degrees. Although it is
straightforward to analyze reflection and transmission at angles other than
perpendicular, the math is tedious and we don!t have time to go into it. But it!s
out there if you ever need it.




EE 3340 Lect. 21 21- 7
Reflection and Transmission at a Boundary Between Semi-Infinite Media
All that long heading means is that we are considering only one reflection,
at the boundary between a medium with wave impedance !
1
and a medium with
a different wave impedance !
2
, as shown in Fig. 21-3.

Fig. 21-3. Incident wave (i), transmitted wave (t), and reflected wave (r) at
plane interface between medium 1 and medium 2.
Our goal is to find expressions for the transmitted and reflected wave
amplitudes as a function of the incident wave amplitude, which is given. The
subscript S indicates all these quantities are phasors at a radian frequency #.
We have conveniently chosen the origin of the z-axis to be at the interface
between the two media, so expressions for the fields there are particularly
simple.
Since z = 0 is a boundary, let!s apply boundary conditions to the tangential
electric and magnetic fields. There are no charges or currents at the boundary,
so these conditions amount to simply
EE 3340 Lect. 21 21- 8
!
E
S
i
+ E
S
r
= E
S
t
(21-2)
and
!
H
S
i
" H
S
r
= H
S
t
. (21-3)
The minus sign in front of the
!
H
S
r
term appears because that vector points into
the page (the other magnetic-field vectors point out of the page).
So far we have four unknowns (the E and H reflected and transmitted
fields) but only two equations. Here are two more equations:
!
E
S
r
H
S
r
= "
1
(21-4)
!
E
S
t
H
S
t
= "
2
. (21-5)
Assuming we know the incident electric and magnetic fields, we now have four
equations and four unknowns, and we proceed to solve for the unknowns.
Sparing you the details, here are the results for the electric fields at z = 0:
!
E
S
t
=
2"
2
"
1
+ "
2
E
S
i
(21-6)
!
E
S
r
=
"
2
# "
1
"
1
+ "
2
E
S
i
(21-7)
The transmitted and reflected magnetic fields can be found using Eqns. 21-4 and
21- 5 once you know the electric fields. And so the problem is solved.
EE 3340 Lect. 21 21- 9
The term in front of
!
E
S
i
should look familiar. If you substitute
transmission-line impedances (Z
1
and Z
2
) for the wave impedances !
1
and !
2
,
you get the old familiar reflection coefficient $:
!
" =
#
2
$ #
1
#
2
+ #
1
=
Z
2
$ Z
1
Z
2
+ Z
1
. (21-8)
We can also define a transmission coefficient T:
!
T =
2"
2
"
2
+ "
1
(21-9)
In fact, the whole mathematical machinery of cascade-connected transmission
lines transfers over exactly to plane waves in layered uniform media. If you like,
you can translate a uniform-plane-wave problem into its equivalent
transmission-line problem using Table 1 below. You solve the problem in its
transmission-line form, and then translate it back into electromagnetic form. If
this seems like too much work, never mind, but it seems to help some people
who are more comfortable with transmission lines than with plane waves.
Table 1: Transmission-Line to Uniform-Plane-Wave Translation
Transmission Line Term Uniform Plane Wave Term
Line impedances
!
Z
1
,
!
Z
2
, . . . Wave impedances
!
"
1
,
!
"
2

Prop. constants
!
"
1
,
!
"
1
,
!
"
2
,
!
"
2
. . . Prop. constants
!
"
1
,
!
"
1
,
!
"
2
,
!
"
2
. . .
Line lengths x
1
, x
2
, . . . Layer thicknesses x
1
, x
2
, . . .
Currents I
1
, I
2
, . . . Transverse magnetic fields H
1
, H
2
,. . .
Voltages V
1
, V
2
, . . . Transverse electric fields E
1
, E
2
, . . .
EE 3340 Lect. 21 21- 10

We will use this approach to solve a problem that more properly belongs in
optics, but is relevant to plane electromagnetic waves as well.
EXAMPLE
Anti-reflection coatings on glass lenses such as camera and eyeglass
lenses are designed to reduce the reflection loss of light that occurs when the
waves move from air ("
r
= 1) to glass, which at optical wavelengths has an index
of refraction as high as 1.897 (so-called high-index glass). Many anti-reflective
coatings use the compound magnesium fluoride (MgF
2
), which has an optical
index of refraction of 1.378. For the wavelength of green light (%=550 nm), find
the thickness t of magnesium-fluoride coating on a semi-infinite slab of high-index
glass that will minimize the amount of reflected light. (See Fig. 21-4) Also,
calculate the fraction of incident electromagnetic power at that wavelength which
is reflected back into the air.
Answers: The first thing we need to do is to relate the index of refraction
to the dielectric constant. As you may recall from physics, the index of refraction
n in a certain medium is the ratio of the speed u of light in a vacuum to the speed
of light in the medium:
!
n =
u(vacuum)
u(medium)
(21-10)
If the medium!s permeability is equal to that of vacuum (and it usually is), then
EE 3340 Lect. 21 21- 11

Fig. 21-4. Magnesium-fluoride anti-reflection coating on spectacle lens:
application of quarter-wave matching principle to plane waves.

we use the fact that the speed of EM waves in a medium depends on the relative
dielectric constant in a way that can be derived from Eqns. 17-24 and 17-25:
!
u(medium) =
1
"
. (21-11)
So for a medium having the permeability of free space but a relative permittivity "
r

>1, the



EE 3340 Lect. 21 21- 12
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RELATIVE PERMITTIVITY AND INDEX OF
REFRACTION
is
!
n = "
r
. (21-12)
So if we transform the indices of refraction into relative dielectric constants, we
find that the relative dielectric constant of high-index glass is "
G
= (1.897)
2
=
3.598, and for MgF
2
it is "
M
= (1.378)
2
=1.899.
Returning to the problem of the anti-reflective coating, the easiest way to
do this is with a quarter-wave transformer, which we learned about in Lecture 4.
The two important characteristics of this device are its length, which has to be %/4
(taking into account the wave velocity in the medium), and its impedance Z
0
. The
matching section!s impedance is related to the source!s characteristic impedance
Z
IN
and the load!s impedance Z
L
by Eqn. 4-5, reproduced here as Eqn. 21-13:
!
Z
0
= Z
IN
Z
L
. (21-13)
Translating that into wave-impedance terms and using Eqn. 21-1 to find wave
impedances in terms of relative permittivities (we assume the relative
permeabilities
r
are all 1), we find that the required matching-layer relative
permittivity "
M
is related to the relative permittivity of high-index glass "
G
by
!
"
0
#
M
= "
0
$
"
0
#
G
(21-14)
or
!
"
M
= "
G
(21-15)
EE 3340 Lect. 21 21- 13
for a perfect match. We are very close, since "
M
is 1.899 and
!
"
G
is 1.897.
So what thickness of MgF
2
amounts to a quarter-wavelength at a
(vacuum) wavelength %
0
of 550 nm? The easiest thing is to figure out the
frequency and then find the wavelength in MgF
2
. The frequency f is simply
!
f =
c
"
0
=
3# 10
8
m s
$1
550# 10
$9
m
= 545.4 THz (21-16)
(THz = terahertz = 10
12
Hz). The wave velocity u
M
in MgF
2
is
!
u
M
=
c
"
M
=
3# 10
8
m s
$1
1.9
= 217.6# 10
6
m s
$1
. (21-17)
And so if we make t a quarter-wavelength in the matching material, we obtain
!
t =
"
M
4
=
u
M
4 f
=
217.6# 10
6
m s
$1
4 545.4 THz
( )
= 99.7 nm (21-18)
A 100-nm layer is easily and precisely made with vacuum deposition technology,
and this is in fact how most anti-reflection coatings are applied.
Assuming all our numbers are exact, what is the remaining reflection of
green light at normal incidence once we!ve applied the coating? Once again, we
can apply the transmission-line analogy to find the input wave impedance at the
front surface of the coating. By analogy with Eqn. 4-3, we have
!
"
IN
=
"
M
2
"
G
. (21-19)
Using our knowledge of the permittivities, we find this gives a value for the wave
impedance looking into the lens (so to speak!) of !
IN
= 376.18 !. This is very
close to the wave impedance of free space, but not exactly equal.
EE 3340 Lect. 21 21- 14
Also, reflection and transmission coefficients are all in terms of wave
amplitudes. To find power transmission or reflection, you have to square the
amplitudes. This might be easiest to see if we use the reflection coefficient
instead. The reflection coefficient itself is
!
" =
#
IN
$ #
0
#
IN
+ #
0
= $6.9% 10
$4
(21-20)
The fraction of power reflected will be the squared magnitude of the reflection
coefficient, namely |$|
2
= 4.7 x 10
-7
, which is essentially perfect. Real coatings do
not work nearly this well, but the principle is the same.