RCS Reduction Using Reconfigurable Chessboard Coding Plasma-Based Dielectric Resonator Structure

Abstract

In this paper, reconfigurable chessboard coding plasma-based dielectric resonator structure for radar cross section reduction is investigated. The radar cross section (RCS) reduction is essential in military applications. The metallic conductor surface is covered with plasma-based dielectric resonator (DRA) unit-cells arranged in chessboard configuration. The plasma ionization voltage values are tuned to reflect the electromagnetic wave with phase shift of 180° and equal amplitudes. The phase 0° state represents the logic “0” while the phase 180° state represents the logic “1”. The chessboard arrangement consists of super-cells with 0/1 logic states. The RCS is reduced over a wide angle range reduction with −18 dBm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> at the broadside direction and below −32 dBm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> over the angular range from −90° to 90° according to the super-cell size. The non-uniform allocation of unit-cells in the super-cell chessboard arrangement is investigated. The RCS reduction bandwidth extended from 8.5 GHz to 9.65 GHz.