High performance ceramic radome - implementation of em design by effective em simulation

A high performance ceramic radome has been developed for a very high-velocity airborne body. The radome L/D (length-to-diameter) ratio is 2.7, the diameter is about 8 wavelengths and the relative bandwidth is 3.8%. The one-way radome attenuation is less than 0.6 dB (0.35 dB average); the increase in average far sidelobes (away from the first sidelobes) is less than 2 dB (above an average antenna sidelobes level of about -34 dB). The maximal Bore-Sight Error (BSE) is less than ± 0.63° (the average is about 0.25°) and the worst BSE Slope (BSES) is less than ±10%. The radome was designed by two sets of EM simulations: an in-house software package was utilized for most of the angular coverage range of the gimbals whereas CST Microwave Studio complemented the simulation for the forward sector where metal tip influence is prominent (the tip region). The predicted performance and the measurement results are in good agreement.