Modeling Dome Arrays Through a Ray-Tracing Method Incorporating Embedded-Element Patterns

The combination of dielectric lenses with phased array antennas, known as dome arrays, leverages the strengths of both antenna technologies, offering a wide range of advantages in terms of radiation performance. This article explores a highly effective two-dimensional ray-tracing modeling approach that evaluates the impact of positioning an arbitrarily shaped dielectric lens near the phased array, as well as the effect of mutual coupling among the antenna elements on the overall radiation behavior of the three-dimensional dome array. The accuracy and effectiveness of this novel ray-tracing technique are validated through numerical comparisons of the resulting far-field patterns with those obtained using a commercial full-wave simulation software. The main innovation of our method relies on its simplicity and high accuracy. The method uses only the radiation patterns of the elements under coupling conditions, which can be quickly simulated with commercial software. Radiation patterns of the complete dome array are calculated through a combination of ray tracing and the Kirchhoff diffraction formula. This simplified approach has been shown to be sufficiently accurate in many practical situations, including scenarios with domes in the near-field region and calculation of radiation patterns associated with cross-polarization.