Normalized Partial Scattering Cross Section for Performance Evaluation of Low-Observability Scattering Structures

Abstract

The development of diffusion metasurfaces created new opportunities to elevate the stealthiness of combat aircraft. Despite the potential significance of metasurfaces, their rigorous design methodologies are still lacking, especially in the context of meticulous control over the scattering of electromagnetic (EM) waves through geometry parameter tuning. Another practical issue is insufficiency of the existing performance metrics, specifically, monostatic and bistatic evaluation of the reflectivity, especially at the design stage of metasurfaces. Both provide limited insight into the RCS reduction properties, with the latter being dependent on the selection of the planes over which the evaluation takes place. This paper introduces a novel performance metric for evaluating scattering characteristics of a metasurface, referred to as Normalized Partial Scattering Cross Section (NPSCS). The metric involves integration of the scattered energy over a specific solid angle, which allows for a comprehensive assessment of the structure performance in a format largely independent of the particular arrangement of the scattering lobes. We demonstrate the utility of the introduced metric using two specific metasurface architectures. In particular, we show that the integral-based metric can be used to discriminate between the various surface configurations (e.g., checkerboard versus random), which cannot be conclusively compared using traditional methods. Consequently, the proposed approach can be a useful tool in benchmarking radar cross section reduction performance of metamaterial-based, and other types of scattering structures.