Radiation Pattern Recovery of the Impaired-Radome-Enclosed Antenna Array

Abstract

It is well known that radome has adverse effects on the performance of the antenna array while protecting it from outside environments. In some extreme cases, e.g., when an airborne radome is ablated during the flight of a high-speed vehicle, the impaired radome will severely alter the radiation pattern (RP) of the antenna array. To counteract this effect, it is desirable that the RP of the array can be recovered to satisfy the preset criteria even in presence of the impaired radome. In this letter, we investigate the method of fast recovery of the RP of an enclosed antenna array when the dielectric radome is damaged. An improved simulated annealing algorithm is combined with the active RPs of antenna elements in the array-radome system to fast restore the RP of the array. Both the mutual coupling among array elements and the interactions between the array and impaired radome are taken into account rigorously, so the RP of the array can be restored with good accuracy. The effectiveness of the method is validated by the numerical and experimental results for the RP recovery of a real-life linear antenna array enclosed by an impaired radome.