The RCS of a cylindrical array antenna coated with a dielectric layer

The scattering properties of dielectric coated waveguide aperture antennas mounted on circular cylinders are investigated. Both the single element antenna and the array case are treated. The array antenna consists of 4 /spl times/ 32 rectangular apertures placed in a rectangular grid on the surface of an infinitely long circular cylinder. The problem is formulated in terms of an integral equation for the aperture fields which is solved with the method of moments using rectangular waveguide modes as basis and test functions. An efficient uniform asymptotic technique is used to calculate the excitation vector and the backscattered far-field. The asymptotic solution is valid for large cylinders coated with thin dielectric layers away from the paraxial (i.e. near axial) region. A similar asymptotic solution is used to calculate the mutual coupling in the nonparaxial region. For the self coupling terms and for the mutual coupling in the paraxial region a planar approximation is used with a corresponding spectral domain technique. Numerical results are presented as a function of frequency, angle of incidence, cylinder radius, and electrical thickness of the coating.