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New for December 2023. This is a topic that was fully studied by Beuhring Pike in the 1960s, that is why we placed him in the Microwave Hall of Fame. While at Vandenberg Air Force Base (now "Space Force Base") he published a paper in the topic in 1965 which still serves as the basis for antenna polarization studies. There is no compelling reason for us to dive into this topic here, just read Pike's paper! Here is a clip from Pike's abstract:
A subsidiary purpose of this paper is to point out the overwhelming importance of polarization by showing that ever receiving antenna is completely "blind" to some radio wave because the polariation mismatch loss is infinitely large. It is hoped that the proof given herein will result in greater application of means of avoiding polarization mismatch losses - means such as Polarization Diversity Reception (PDR) and Polarization Alternation of Transmissions (PAT).
Even though you can download it from the DTIC site, we saved a copy of it you can access here so you don't have to search for it. It is publucally released.
Long ago a company known as Nurad created a data sheet that summarizes Pike equations. Nurad was eventually was acquired by Cobham, you can follow their trajectory on our where-are-they-now page. Here is a screen shot of it, we don't expect you to be able to read it.
We tried to contact Cobham to get permission to use it here but got no response, so we'll take that as "have at it". Here is the data sheet.
We purchased Pike's lab notebook so that we can include images of it on this page when we get around to it.
References
Beuhring W. Pike, "POWER TRANSFER BETWEEN TWO ANTENNAS WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO POLARIZATION", ,Air Force Systems Command, Vandenberg Air Force Base, California December 1965.