Shielding of Tri-Patch Antenna Using 3D Printed Composite Carbon/PLA Absorber for Ultra Wideband Snow Radar Systems

In this paper an improved design of the tri-patch antenna is presented intended for an upward looking bi-static Ultrawideband (UWB) snow radar system. The antenna design features Composite Carbon - Poly Lactic Acid (CC/PLA) 3D printable pyramidal absorbers reducing coupling and reflections between the transmitter and receiver. This is important as clutter induced jitter is the dominant noise source at close range measurements. Simulation in the frequency domain show significant reduction in the coupling of -15 to - 25 dB at 4.5 Ghz. While in time-domain simulation the clutter is reduced by
$< 20\text{dB}$
at ranges
$> 0.25m$
.