Reconfigurable stealth radome using active frequency selective surface technology

Abstract

Frequency Selective Surface (FSS) stealth radome is the new development of radome, however the “being stealth in-band” limit still has not been well solved. Active FSS (AFSS) with reconfigurable performance can change its characteristic via external control and realize “invisible-all-band” by “time-domain-stealth” feature. In this paper, an AFSS working at X-band with excellent filter performance is designed, which keeps band-pass at OFF state while shifts to shielding at ON state. According to both transparent and opaque states of AFSS, we have simulated and compared the backward mono-static RCS of dielectric and metal radomes with antenna model inside respectively. The results show that AFSS technology can reduce the RCS of specular reflection of antenna inside the radome up to 10dB, and keep the RCS of radome-antenna system at a low level (<−10dB) in the range of −60° to +60°. The reconfigurable Stealth radome will provide more potential and attractive applications in electronic warfare of future.