A high-frequency analysis of radome-induced radar pointing error

An analysis is presented of the effect of a tangent ogive radome on the pointing accuracy of a monopulse radar employing an aperture antenna. The radar is assumed to be operating in the receive mode, and the incident fields at the antenna are found by a ray tracing procedure. Rays entering the antenna aperture by direct transmission through the radome and by single reflection from the radome interior are considered. The radome wall is treated as being locally planar. The antenna can be scanned in two angular directions, and two orthogonal polarization states which produce an arbitrarily polarized incident field are considered. Numerical results are presented for both in-plane and cross-plane errors as a function of scan angle and polarization.