Design of the PHARUS Radome; Electrical Aspects.
Abstract
A radome is an RF transparent window or lens in front of the antenna. Its purpose is to protect the antenna against harsh environmental conditions like moisture, (acid) rain, particles etc. An airborne system like PHARUS cannot do without a protective radome. PHARUS is an airborne full-polarimetric C-band SAR system for Remote Sensing applications. The antenna is a phased array, consisting of printed microstrip patch radiators. More information about PHARUS can be found in. Nowadays, high performance fibres are very popular for radome design since they allow a good compromise between mechanical strength and RF-transparency. The PHARUS radome is based on a Dyneema(TM) composite. This is a polyethylene fibre embedded in a polyethylene adhesive. The material is hardened under pressure (20 bar) and high temperature. However, a radome, like any other dielectric layer, can cause additional cross polarisation since the polarisation components parallel and perpendicular to the plane of incidence have different transmission characteristics. Besides that, the radome is also a discontinuity in the propagation path, so it will reflect a part of the incident field. This is called the reflection loss. To cope with all the aspects in the design of the radome, some simulations have been made. This report describes the analysis method and shows some results of the simulations. The reader is assumed to be familiar with the fundamentals of Electromagnetic Theory.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 01, 1996
- Accession Number
- ADA321961
Entities
People
- M. H. Paquay
Organizations
- Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research