An Accurate Method for Designing, Characterizing, and Testing a Multi-Layer Radome for mm-Wave Applications

This paper presents an accurate procedure to design, characterize and test a radome for millimeter-wave applications. In this procedure, an accurate analytical model is presented to design a radome structure that takes into consideration the bandwidth, losses, reflections and depolarization factor as a function of frequency and incident angle. To guarantee a good operational electrical performance, the proposed procedure includes a material characterization and accurate test procedure based on the free-space Gaussian beam method and time gating filtering technique. Four radomes (two-monolithic and two A-sandwich) at 82 GHz and 94 GHz are designed, characterized and tested to validate the proposed technique. Results obtained with this procedure are compared with numerical simulations and experimental results. This method is shown to be accurate and versatile for radomes in mm-Wave applications.