FDTD METHOD APPLIED TO THE STUDY OF RADAR CROSS-SECTION OF MICROSTRIP PATCH ANTENNAS

Because of their indisputable advantages, microstrip patch antennas have been implemented these last several years especially in aerospace application. Unfortunately, these antennas become bright points detected by radars causing observed Res to increase significantly particularly at microwave frequencies. As a consequence, a major research effort is focused on RCS reduction. This paper introduces numerical tools based on the finite difference time domain method enabling computation of the RCS of a microstrip patch antenna over a very large bandwidth. This method is then validated, results are given, and a simple method for reducing Res is proposed.