Design and Structural Analysis of Ka-Band Radome for Reflector Antennas

Design of a composite radome for Ka-Band reflector antenna is presented in this paper. Low density foam material is used as the core layer, sandwiched between stacked layers of high density glass prepreg for attaining RF transparency and mechanical stiffness. Optimum design of a radome is always a trade-off between RF and mechanical requirements, so a rigorous analysis is conducted to finalize this design. To verify the radome electrically for antenna applications, a comparison of radiation patterns of reflector antenna with and without radome is performed. Maximum loss introduced by radome is around 0.6dB with minimal effect on other parameters of reflector antenna. Designed radome is mounted on to a parabolic reflector antenna for analyzing it in various environmental conditions. Maximum Inverse Reserve Factor (IRF) and minimum factor of safety of radome for the worst environment condition comes out to be 0.39 and 2.5 respectively. Analysis results are meeting both RF and mechanical requirements of radome. Hence, designed radome is promising candidate for Ka-Band reflector antenna applications.