Impact of radomes on airborne pulse-Doppler radar performance

Installed antenna sidelobe levels are critically important to airborne pulse-Doppler radar systems, principally through their impact on the detection range of medium PRF radar modes. This paper presents a new radome modelling technique which allows rapid calculation of the installed radiation pattern, a problem that was hitherto intractable. This capability enables the efficient assessment of radome designs in terms of radar performance as well as facilitating a more rapid constant false alarm rate (CFAR) optimisation process.