Investigation of Microwave Attenuation by Solid Rocket Exhausts

Abstract

In rocket flights, ionized exhaust plumes from solid rocket motors may interfere with RF transmission under some conditions. In order to clarify the important physical process involved, microwave attenuation and phase delay due to rocket exhaust plumes were measured during sea-level static firing tests conducted on two types of full-scale solid propellant rocket motors. The measured data were analyzed by comparing them with numerical results such as flowfield simulations of exhaust plumes and by employing a detailed analysis of microwave transmission by using a frequency-dependent finitedifference time-domain (FD2TD) method. The results revealed that either the line-of-sight microwave transmission through ionized plumes or the diffracted path around the exhaust plume mainly affects the received RF level, which depends on the magnitude of the plasma RF interaction. For the actual launch vehicle flight, the transmission process is dominated by the diffraction effect so that we applied a two-dimensional diffraction theory to analyze the communication between a vehicle and a ground station. The attenuation levels estimated using diffraction theory agree with the data recorded in-flight.