Characteristic Mode Cancellation Method and Its Application for Antenna RCS Reduction

• Published in: IEEE antennas and wireless propagation letters Vol. 18; no. 9; pp. 1784 - 1788
• Main Authors: Shi, Yan, Meng, Zan Kui, Wei, Wen Yue, Zheng, Wei, Li, Long
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.09.2019; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Antenna arrays; Antenna design; Antenna measurements; Backscatter; Broadband; Broadband antennas; Broadband radar cross section (RCS) reduction; Cancellation; characteristic mode cancellation (CMC); characteristic mode theory (CMT); checkerboard array; Microstrip; Microstrip antenna arrays; Microstrip antennas; Radar cross sections; Reduction
• ISSN: 1536-1225; 1548-5757
• DOI: 10.1109/LAWP.2019.2929834

This letter proposed a characteristic mode cancellation method for design of an antenna radar cross section (RCS) reduction. Two kinds of subarrays whose unit cells are composed of a square patch with a circle hole and a cross patch, respectively, are designed. With the characteristic mode theory, the currents represented by the characteristic modes of two subarrays flow in an opposite direction. By arranging two subarrays into a checkerboard patterned array, cancellation of their characteristic modes is achieved and, thus, the resultant RCS of the whole array is greatly reduced. The checkerboard array is integrated with a microstrip antenna to reduce its RCS. The simulated and measured results are in good agreement and show that with the checkerboard array, the operating band of the reference microstrip antenna covering 8.32-9.32 GHz keeps unchanged, and the −10 dB broadband RCS reduction both in band and out of band of the microstrip antenna is from 6.4 to 21.4 GHz with an in-band gain increase of 1 dB.