Typically, large radar antennas are covered with radomes in order to protect them from weather conditions and to enable them to operate continuously without loss of precision. Due to their large size, the radomes are assembled from many panels connected together forming joints or seams. In many applications the panels are type-A sandwiches that are optimized for minimum transmission loss over moderately narrow bandwidths. The seams and joints in a sandwich radome introduce scattering effects that can degrade the overall electromagnetic performance of the radome. Tuning the dielectric seams with conductive wires and optimizing their geometry is, therefore, crucial to enhancing the electromagnetic performance of the radome. This paper addresses the problem of systematically tuning the dielectric seams and presents both numerical and experimental results to illustrate the tuning procedure. Also included in the paper are results showing the effect of the tuning of the radome on the radiation pattern of an enclosed aperture of circular or elliptic shape.
Abstruct-In recent years, the compact range has become a popular measurement tool in the evaluation of microwave antennas. This trend leads to the use of larger reflectors over larger frequency bands. Those reflectors can be built to the required accuracies, hut they have to be assembled from many panels which introduce interpanel gaps. The electromagnetic scattering produced by the gaps affects the uniformity of the field in the quiet zone of the compact range. An analytical approach coupled with experimental determination of a key parameter has been developed to quantify the effect of the scattering from the interpanel gaps in a compact range. The results show the significance of this effect on the copol and x-pol distribution in the quiet zone area.
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