Broadband cloaking of antenna struts using transmission-line networks

In this paper, a broadband cloak designed for an application as an antenna strut is presented. The cloak is using Transmission-Line Networks concept. In these papers, cloaking was demonstrated for wide incident angle range. Here, we want to reduce scattering from a strut located in the aperture of a reflector antenna. In this case, the wave field is dominated by rays propagating in directions perpendicular to the focal plane. Therefore, in this paper we modify and optimize the Transmission-Line Network for a specific angle of incidence (broadside). Simulation and experimental results are presented and they both verify that the cloak works well. The scattering parameters (transmission and reflection coefficients) and the RCS of the cloaked object are compared with that of uncloaked object and free space for simulation. For experimentation, we only show scattering parameters. It is shown that although the cloak does not have the same characteristics as free space, it brings a considerable improvement over the uncloaked object case over a broad frequency range.