A Novel Radome Assessment and Transmission Test System Based on Near Field Measurement

In the aviation maintenance, repair, and overhaul industry, when a radome is repaired, its quality needs to be verified before mounted back to the aircraft. It needs to check the integrity of the honeycomb structure of the radome, and more importantly, to verify that the transmissivity of the radome meets the standard. But the traditional way to check the radome transmissivity is time consuming and requires far-field test range or an anechoic chamber which the repair shop cannot have access to the high-cost specific transmissivity test facility. This study proposed a small scaled and low-profit system by using near-field test data which is compliant with the updated standard RTCA DO-213A. This system is capable of both assessing the subsurface structure and verifying the transmissivity of the repaired radome.