Efficient surface integral equation analysis of aperture antennas with radomes

For protecting antennas from environmental effects, and preserving aerodynamic profiles of objects with antennas, dielectric radomes are used already for a long time [1]. The presence of radomes, which commonly have different shapes, cf. e.g. [2], can significantly affect the radiation characteristics of corresponding antennas, and, hence, their analysis has found much attention in the recent past. For aperture antennas with radomes, cf. schematic sketch in Fig. 1 [3], many different techniques have been applied so far, such as ray optics [4], equivalence principles with image theory [5], integral equation (IE) methods for 2D problems [6], hybrid physical optics-method of moments (PO-MoM) techniques [3], and the finite-difference time-domain (FD-TD) method [7]. Approximate methods can lead to accuracy problems, 3D solvers can be too time consuming for desirable optimizations.