Design of FSS-antenna-radome system for airborne and ground applications

Radome being an RF window and support structure for an antenna system is a very critical element of terrestrial and airborne radar systems. This paper presents an efficient X-band frequency select surface (FSS)-antenna-radome system for airborne and ground applications. In the first step, an optimum wall configuration with lowest insertion loss is found out of A-sandwich, C-sandwich and multilayers wall configurations. In the second step, two 5x5 arrays (FSS screens) are designed that cover the whole antenna face in the broadside direction for a controlled and secure communication system. A slotted array on a dielectric substrate gives a bandpass feature with antenna for radome operation. A dipole array on a dielectric substrate gives a broader bandwidth with antenna somewhat different from antenna alone. It makes the antenna to stop radiating for a specific band. So, it gives bandstop feature. This proposed FSS-antenna-radome system is demonstrated with an X-band high directional horn antenna over the frequency range 9.4-16 GHz under a sandwich-wall dielectric radome. The bandpass and bandstop features make this proposed FSS-antenna-radome a good candidate for ground and airborne applications for secure communications. In bandpass feature, antenna becomes inaccessible to other antennas/radars except a narrow band.