Efficient design of a radome for minimised transmission loss

Abstract

A radome has to be carefully designed to ensure it has minimum impact on the performance of the antenna. Traditional approaches involve equation approximations, complex ray tracing, iterative manufacturing process and or electrically large and lengthy Electromagnetic (EM) simulations. The novel approach described in this paper involves a 2D Ray Tracing Method (2DTRM) simulation in MATLAB and an electrically small unit cell simulation in HFSS. This new approach gives an optimal thickness result that is only 0.004mm different to that of a full EM simulation. The radome is manufactured and Radio Frequency (RF) tested in an Anechoic Chamber (AC), the calculated thickness is shown to be the optimal thickness.

Analysis of Performance Degradation Introduced by Radome for High-Precision GNSS Antenna

“…Moreover, ray techniques have been widely used for describing propagation through a radome wall both in their classical form and by employing the recently proposed evolutionary concept such as 2D or 3D ray-tracing and complex ray-tracing [12][13][14][15]. Sheret et al [16] present a novel approach involving a twodimensional ray-tracing method simulation and an electrically small unit cell simulation in high-frequency structure simulator to give an optimal thickness result which ensure minimum impact on the performance of the antenna. Xu et al [17,18] have used a 3-D ray-tracing method to evaluate the radome performance parameters and reveal that the EM characteristic of inhomogeneous radomes is potential in realizing high-performance airborne radomes superior to traditional variable thickness radomes (VTR).…”

Scattering and Radiation Characteristics of Antenna Systems Under Nose Dielectric Radomes

“…Some computational models have been described in recent papers for performance of radiation patterns of radar antennas with dielectric radomes [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. But the publications known to us do not contain results concerning the RCS of antennas under nose radomes (problem 1 in our paper).…”