Objectives of the course

The main objective of the course is to introduce the fundamentals of electromagnetic fields, starting from the sources of the electric and magnetic fileds, to the separate dissertation on the electric and magnetic fields in the static domain, to the treatise of the electromagnetic field in the time varying domain. This course is intended to lay solid foundations for the follow-up courses investigating more in detail the role of electromagnetic waves in ICT applications (e.g. guided and free-space transmission of information). Some elements of such applications are already preliminarily introduced in this course (e.g. transmission lines and plane waves).
 

Contents

Theory

• Basics of scalar and vector fields and vector differential operators. Review of electrostatics and magnetostatics in free space and in materials.
• Maxwell’s Equations. Definition of time-varying regime. Integral and differential forms of Faraday's law, Ampere-Maxwell’s law and Gauss laws. Poynting’s theorem. Maxwell’s equation in sinusoidal steady state regime.
• Plane waves. Definition and main properties of plane waves. Plane wave solution of Maxwell’s equations in lossless and lossy media. Polarization of plane waves. Propagation in dielectrics and good conductors. Orthogonal incidence of plane wave on double-layer structure: reflection and transmission.
• Transmission lines. Transmission line equations and their solution in terms of voltage and current waves and associated fields. Characteristics and input impedances. Incident and reflected waves. Reflection and transmission coefficients and standing wave ratio. Power balance. Lossy transmission lines.

Practice

• Examples of calculation of elettrostatic and magnetostatic fields with elementary sources.
• Examples of calculation of the electromagnetic field in the time varying domain.
• Simple problems involving the propagation of plane waves in free space and in different materials.
• Calculation of the main parameters characterizing tranmission lines.
• Calulation of the impedance and of power transfer along a transmission line (also lossy ones).

Pre-requisites: trigonometry, calculus with complex numbers, basic notion on vectors, differential and intergal calculus.

Books

• B. Guru and H. Hiziroglu, Electromagnetic field theory fundamentals, Editor: Cambridge University Press, Year: 2004, ISBN: 0521830168
• C. Riva, G. G. Gentili, Appunti di campi elettromagnetici, Libreria Cortina.

Didactic material

Exams (no solution)

Years 2015

Years 2016

Years 2017

Exams (with solution)

22^nd of January 2018

12^th of February 2018

29^th of June 2018

18^th of July 2018

31^st of January 2019

20^th of February 2019

8^th of July 2019

Problems (with solution)

Induced electromotive force