Analysis of the influence of the empennage to the radiation pattern of airborne antenna array by the GTD method

A method which applies the GTD theory to analyze the pattern of a real electrically large airborne antenna array is presented in this paper. In this method, each element of the antenna array is considered as a dipole. Then the object which influences the pattern of the array in the near-field of the whole array (including empennage, fuselage, caudal fin, etc.) can be considered in the far-field of the element because of the tiny size of the element. In this approximate model, according to the GTD theory, we can trace the ray path separately to compute the field of each element, and then the distribution of the field of the whole array can be obtained by superposition of the contribute of every array element. The analysis of the field of an airborne ellipse planar array has been made in this paper, and the results have been obtained. This model can be widely used in the EMC prediction for antenna array system in a complex environment.