Boresight errors induced by missile radomes

Radome induced boresight errors are defined in terms of antenna difference port to sum port voltage ratios. The antenna port voltages are derived using the reaction integral for the case of a planar waveguide slot array in the presence of a dielectric radome. Radome transmission uses planar slab results. Both the antenna reflection and the radome shadow contribution are taken into account. Although only linear copolarized comparisons are presented here, the analysis is kept arbitrary with respect to incident and seeker antenna polarizations. Measurements include a line source experiment that tests the antenna model sensitivity to geometry. A simple distributed source experiment, in the form of a planar slab radome with thickness corrugation, tests the influence of transmission through varying wall thickness. Effects of curvature are assessed with an offset hemisphere radome and finally a series of tangent ogive radome comparisons verify the limits of the analysis. A trend for the yaw errors to be less accurate than the pitch errors is consistently noted for the tangent ogive radomes, and this behavior is discussed.