COMPOSITE BASED ELECTROMAGNETIC TRANSPARENT MATERIALS FOR RADOME APPLICATIONS

摘要

Main purpose of Radome is to protect a communication dish or antenna from environment while giving low attenuation path to travelling Electromagnetic waves. This housing for satellite communication dish and antennas demands electromagnetic transparent materials. Insulated fibre reinforces composites serves as prime candidate for developing Radome. Small scale satellite communication is done through reflector dishes which operate in Ku, C or S band. These insulated fibres include primarily glass and aramid fibre. These fibres have low dielectric loss and hence results in material with lower tangent loss values. The matrix system of interest is mainly epoxy based. Moreover for Radome material, it must sustain environmental conditions such as sun radiations, humidity and rainfall. Therefore fibre reinforced plastics also fulfil this criterion. Size of Radome varies with application hence for specified production method is used for a specific application. For larger Radome such as housing for satellite dish, aramid honeycomb structure may be used which offers flexibility in shape as well as low loss tangent. This research deals with finding suitable composite material for Radome applications. This composite must possess low dielectric loss component. The testing of such materials is carried out in frequency range of 5 to 18 GHz which is the interested range of satellite communication. Also some samples were tested only in Ku band rage in order to further analyze the performance for Geo Satellites.