Design, fabrication and measurement of an FSS antenna ground plane

It is always a challenge to accommodate the large number of antennas needed to meet desired system goals on aircraft. This is especially true on small vehicles where the number of prime locations is minimal. One way to mitigate this situation is to co-locate as many antennas as possible. This paper discusses a frequency selective surface ground plane that can be place on a radome covering a dish antenna. It is intended to provide minimal transmission loss at the dish antennas frequency and yet provide a good conducting ground plane for the antenna to be placed on the ground plane. This talk will discuss various aspects of the FSS design that is intended to accommodate fabrication issues using a direct write manufacturing method that has recently been developed. The resulting design will be validated by comparing predictions to measurements.