REACH/PREACH — A Physical Optics based tool for simulation of radome effects on antenna patterns

A tool called REACH/PREACH ((Parallel) Radome Effects on Antenna Characteristics) is presented. The purpose of the software is to compute the influence of an arbitrarily shaped, tapered multi-layer radome on the radiation pattern of an array antenna. Some details of the implementation of the Physical Optics based algorithm are explained in this paper. A special phase correction technique called Airial Radome Correction (ARC) entitles the user to restrict the computation domain to the inner radome surface which keeps the overall modeling quite simple. Especially for tapered radomes, i.e. radomes with a thickness variation, the ARC turns out to be necessary unless the outer radome surface is explicitly included in the computational model.