Far-Field Pattern Tolerance Analysis of the Antenna-Radome System With the Material Thickness Error: An Interval Arithmetic Approach

Abstract

As the geometry thickness error of composite radome impacts the electromagnetic (EM) performance of the antenna-radome system, a novel interval arithmetic analytic approach to the analysis of the effect on average power pattern of antenna-radome system with the thickness error in the composite radome-based is proposed. The thickness error of radome’s composite material is modeled as interval-valued errors. The link between the interval of thickness error and the interval power pattern along with some main EM characteristics (sidelobe level, peak power, and half-power beamwidth) expressed as intervals are efficiently constructed. Some comparisons with measured and simulated results reported in the state-of-the-art literature, experiment data and Monte Carlo (MC) method result serve as a way to validate the interval analysis (IA)-based method. Some numerical examples are reported to reveal the effect of the main geometric properties (i.e., location, size, width, and midpoint of the error interval) of the thickness error interval on power pattern. The obtained results show that the proposed IA-based approach offers tangible advantages and exhibits effectiveness versus some traditional statistical techniques (e.g., MC method).