EM design of active metamaterial based airborne radome for electronic warfare applications

Abstract

The EM design and analysis of active hybridelement metamaterial-based radome has been presented for electronic warfare applications. The proposed metamaterial (MTM) element is loaded with varactor diode and embedded into the mid-plane of the monolithic radome wall. The EM analysis of proposed monolithic radome is carried out with and without varactor diode based on full-wave method. At 0-volt bias voltage of varactor, it exhibits 2.56 GHz bandwidth w.r.t. center frequency 9 GHz corresponding to 90% transmission efficiency (∼ −0.4 dB transmission loss), which is similar to that of radome without varactor. At maximum reverse voltage (14.95 volts), the center frequency is shifted to 9.95 GHz and shows better transmission efficiency as compared to the radome without varactor. However, the bandwidth reduces to 0.75 GHz due to increase in the varactor diode capacitive effect, which is sufficient for modern radar systems. Thus operating frequency of proposed active radome can be tuned over the frequency range of 9-9.95 GHz during the operation of the radome system.