EM Design of Hybrid-element FSS Structure for Radome Application

A monolithic radome wall embedded with novel hybrid-element FSS shows superior electromagnetic performance when compared to conventional monolithic radome. The proposed FSS structure presented in this paper consists of square loop configured with Jerusalem cross. The EM performance analysis of the proposed FSS structure is carried out based on the equivalent circuit model approach. The FSS structure exhibits bandpass response over the frequency range of 9.68-10.45 GHz with very good transmission efficiency at normal incidence. To show the superiority of FSS-radome over conventional radome, its transmission characteristic is compared with that of half wave monolithic radome at 0 degrees and 50 degrees incidence angle. It is observed that the FSS embedded radome exhibits more bandwidth (1.66 GHz) as compared to monolithic radome (0.5 GHz) and also the proposed FSS-radome shows sharp roll-off characteristics which helps in out-of-band RCS reduction. Further a prototype of FSS embedded planar radome is fabricated and measured for proofof-the-concept.