An Ultra-Wide Band Radome for High-Performance and Dual-Polarized Radar and Communication Systems

Abstract

This paper presents a new design technique to develop a multi-layer radome for ultra-wide-band, dual-polarized radar and communication systems. In the proposed technique, a multi-layer radome is designed using a combination of A-sandwich structures, which are not used in conventional multi-layer radomes. In contrast with conventional radomes, this technique enables a substantial increase of bandwidth with a negligible change in the overall radome thickness. In addition, it provides excellent RF performance, thermal isolation, and mechanical strength. Three different multi-layer radomes for different bandwidths are designed. Parameters such as co-polarization mismatch and depolarization ratio are used to evaluate the proposed dual-polarized radome as a function of incident angle and frequency. To validate this new technique, a 5A-sandwich radome is designed to operate from 1 GHz to 14 GHz and its RF performance is evaluated by measuring S-parameters. The proposed radome is further investigated by measuring the radiation patterns of horn antennas at different bands (S-, C-, X- and Ku-bands) with and without the radomes. The measured losses recorded are below 0.5 dB with an absolute error less than 0.05 dB between the calculations and measurements. An S-band electronically scanned active phased array antenna is also used to evaluate the radome as a function of incident angles. In this case, the maximum recorded losses are below 0.4 dB and the absolute errors between the calculations and measurements are below 0.1 dB. The proposed technique and radome can be used in different applications such as surveillance systems, earth exploration satellite, aeronautical radio-navigation, and especially in dual-polarized weather radars that require a high polarization performance.

Keywords

• A-sandwich
• dual-polarized
• multi-band
• multi-layer
• planar
• radar