Articles techniques et présentations

Radome is a dielectric Electromagnetic (EM) transparent structure that encloses antenna and protects from various environmental conditions. The advancements in the field of high performance antennas increase the challenges in EM design and analysis of radome. The presence of radome always effects the radiation properties of antenna, cause radiation pattern distortion and boresight error. Hence the radome design should not be decoupled from antenna analysis. Ground based hemispherical radomes are used to enclose satellite communication antennas, military and commercial radars. The antenna used for these applications are reflector antennas and phased array antennas. In this proposed work, EM design of a hemispherical radome surrounding a parabolic reflector antenna is implemented using COMSOL Multiphysics® software and radome-antenna interactions are studied. Further radiation pattern analysis of the reflector antenna with or without radome will be reported along with high performance radome design.

Parabolic reflector antenna frequently referred as dish antenna and are used as high gain antennas for point-to-point communications. It consists of parabolic reflector that gathers and focuses the entering parallel beam of radio waves onto the antenna located at its focus [1]. The antenna placed at the focus is referred to as the antenna feed.

Parabolic reflector antenna operating at L-band frequency enclosed inside an A- sandwich radome is designed in this work. A-sandwich radome consist of three layers. A-sandwich design primarily provides high mechanical strength i.e. high strength to weight ratio and good electrical performance for smaller angle of incidence. Hence a high performance A-sandwitch ground based radome designed using COMSOL Multiphysics® will be the focus of this work.