Excitation and use of guided surface wave modes on lossy media
James F. Corum · Kenneth L. Corum · CPG Technologies, LLC
Abstract and summary · read the original at the source
In one page
James F. Corum and Kenneth L. Corum, filing for CPG Technologies, patent a way to send power along the ground instead of radiating it through the air. The argument starts with a distinction: a radiated field leaves the antenna and is gone whether or not anyone receives it, while a guided field stays bound to a boundary and draws real power only when a load is connected — until then the source runs idle. Both come out of the same wave equation. In 1907 Jonathan Zenneck wrote the exact solution for a wave running along the boundary between a lossy conductor — the Earth — and an insulator, and the boundary reflects nothing only when the field arrives at a complex Brewster angle. The Corums’ polyphase waveguide probe synthesises that angle by controlling the ratio and relative phase of the field’s vertical and horizontal parts, and the patent reports measured field strength and phase against distance at 59 and at 1.85 megahertz. Its reference list opens with ten Tesla patents.
Why it matters hereThis is the engineering document under the Corum brothers’ and Viziv’s surface-wave work in the scalar-wave and vector-potential chapter: a Tesla-lineage claim restated as modern boundary-value physics, with a named launching condition and field measurements anyone can go and repeat.
What it claims
01A radiated field leaves the antenna and is lost whether or not anyone receives it; a guided field stays bound to a boundary, and the source delivers real power only when a load is present — otherwise it runs idle, as a generator does on an unloaded power line.Detailed description, FIG. 1
Settled physics02Both behaviours fall out of the same wave equation: the continuous part of the wave-number spectrum gives the radiation field, while the discrete poles give non-radiating travelling surface waves that decay exponentially away from the interface — guided transmission-line modes.Detailed description, citing Sommerfeld 1909 and Collin 1960
Settled physics03Zenneck’s 1907 closed-form solution of Maxwell’s equations describes such a wave along the interface between a lossy conducting medium such as the Earth and an insulator such as the atmosphere, and the reflection coefficient at that interface goes to zero only for incidence at a complex Brewster angle.Detailed description, FIG. 2, citing Zenneck 1907 and Stratton 1941 p. 516
Settled physics04Controlling the magnitude of the complex field ratio and the relative phase between the vertical and horizontal components of the incident field makes the synthesised electric field arrive at the complex Brewster angle, and that synthetically excites a Zenneck surface wave over the interface — which is what the polyphase waveguide probe and its charge terminals are built to do.Detailed description, FIGS. 5–6, Equations 37–41
Designed, not yet built05Because the probe’s fields automatically satisfy the complex Brewster angle requirement for zero reflection, radiation is negligible while guided surface-wave propagation is, in the inventors’ words, dramatically enhanced.Detailed description, following Equations 20–23
What to watch06The theory has been available for over a century, but the patent states that no known structure had launched open-surface guided waves over lossy media with practical efficiency; the verification offered is measured field strength and phase against distance at 59 megahertz and measured field strength at 1.85 megahertz.Detailed description; FIGS. 9–11
What to watch
The way in
https://patents.google.com/patent/US9912031B2/enUS patents are in the public domain. The granted copy available to this library is a page-image facsimile, so this sheet carries the abstract and the summary; the full specification, its 27 claims and its 24 drawing sheets are at the source.
How to cite it
James F. Corum, Kenneth L. Corum, CPG Technologies, LLC (2018) Excitation and use of guided surface wave modes on lossy media. US9912031B2
Where it sits in the curriculum