Radiation pattern calculation for antennas installed in electrically large dielectric radomes

When an antenna is installed within a dielectric radome, it is desired that the influence of the radome to the radiation pattern and other parameters be as small as possible. However, due to the complicated shape and the presence of the finite dielectric thickness, the installed radiation pattern will eventually be different in some degree from that of the antenna alone in free-space. Hence, accurately predicting the installed radiation pattern is important to characterize the realistic performance of the antenna. Many numerical approaches exist for this purpose. For electrically small sized radomes, the analysis can be easily carried out using many full-wave methods such as presented in [1] and [2] in which the volume integral equation and surface integral equations are used. For electrically large and smooth dielectric radomes, an approximate method called thin dielectric sheet approximation (TDS) introduced in [4] will be very effective to perform the analysis since only a surface integral equation is involved.