Accurate and Approximate Optimization of the Refflector-In-Radome Antenna System

摘要

Radome is a dielectric shell used to protect reflector antennas form the environmental effects. The presence of the radome in the near zone of the reflector is, however, a disturbing factor itself which affects the antenna performance: the main beam of the antenna is typically distorted, sidelobe level gets higher, and directivity is lost. In part, it happens due to the fact that the system is not optimized properly. In practice, the reflector and the radome are optimized separately, with the reflector analysis based on the physical optics, and the radome analysi sbase don thin-layer and locally-flat approzimations (1,2). But, for the accurate optimization. one has to analyze the reflector-in-radome antenna system in a self-consistentmanner, by taking into account all the interactions between the elements. In this case, the integral equation ananlysis is the only reliable approach providing a solution of any desired accuracy needed for the optimization procedure.