Variable Thickness Radome Design Method with Optimised Cross-Section Thickness

The electrical properties of a radome are mainly affected by its shape, cross-section thickness and material properties. Conventional methods for designing the electrical properties of a radome are usually based on the thickness design based on the incidence angle of electromagnetic wave radiation when it reaches the outer wall of the radome to achieve variable thickness radome design. However, this paper proposes a novel design method based on the ray tracing method, whose core idea is to calculate the wall thickness of the radome based on the incidence angle when the antenna radiation ideally reaches the inner wall of the radome. While keeping the shape of the outer wall of the radome unchanged, the position of the inner wall of the radome is determined by the extension of the outer wall inwards. Compared with the conventional method, this new method is more consistent with the outward radiation of the radome, is closer to the assumptions of the ray-tracing method, and improves the transmission performance by reducing the loss in the transmission process. The effectiveness of the proposed design method is verified through experiments on a tangent-ogive variable thickness radome.