Mitigation of Reflector Dish Wet Antenna Effect at 72 and 84 GHz

Millimeter waves in W- and V-band are allocated for high-bandwidth satellite communications in order to achieve higher data transfer rates. However, atmospheric propagation characteristics are not well understood at these frequencies. This work examines the substantial and yet avoidable signal degrading effect, wetness of antenna, on reflector dish antennas at 72 and 84 GHz. Understanding this effect is vital to characterizing the path loss due to environmental conditions. Our measurements include the wet antenna effect on a bare reflector dish antenna, a reflector dish covered with an untreated radome, and lastly a reflector dish covered with a hydrophobic coating applied to the radome. Our research indicates that the wet antenna effect was optimally mitigated with the radome cover treated with a hydrophobic material. This research will guide millimeter-wave communication system designers to avoid the wet antenna effect, thereby increasing their potential link availability.