AN OPTIMAL TRANSMISSION THROUGH STEALTH RADOME

Abstract

Radome is a prominent component for weapon systems such as aircrafts, warships, and missiles to attain the stealth performance by absorbing/reflecting EM (Electromagnetic) wave’s incident upon it. In this work stealth radome comprising of different structures have been presented. Horn antenna has been designed using antenna tool kit provided in the HFSS software. However, the desired antenna was designed by optimizing the different antenna parameters. The operating bandwidth of FSS is 2-18GHz. The substrate used for FSS is Rogers 3003 having dielectric constant 3.0 and the rings are of metal. Radome discussed in this report is of hemispherical type. The substrate used for Radome is Teflon having dielectric constant 2.1. The radome is made up of one layer. The one layer construction is a monolithic construction. A radome works on a particular frequency band, in which it performs as a band pass filter at a given frequency band, while reflecting the waves above the transmission band. The band pass characteristic is achieved by a metallic FSS having double ring structures. The monolithic construction protects the horn antenna in the radome from external weather disturbances. A Horn antenna was designed to perform as source for FSS and radome. The electromagnetic transmission characteristics of the radome wall and FSS were simulated with 3-dimensional electromagnetic analysis software, HFSS.