Reconfigurable radar absorbing structure applied to the antenna radar cross section reduction

Abstract

An active reconfigurable radar absorbing structure (RAS) with the pin diode was proposed to reduce the radar cross section (RCS) of antenna. The operating states of the RAS reflector can be switched by using the pin diode. For ON-state and OFF-state diodes, the reflection coefficients of the RAS reflector were less than −25 dB and more than −0.8 dB around 8.3GHz, respectively. The RAS reflector with ON-state diodes can be used as a dipole antenna reflector and has the same radiation performance as a dipole with a metal reflector, while the RAS reflector with OFF-state diodes can be used as a radar absorber for RCS reduction. Meanwhile, chessboard-like geometry RAS reflector was proposed to achieve wideband RCS reduction. The RCS reduction band covers the working band and is extended to 5–18 GHz. The results show that the reconfigurable RAS reflector can contribute to the antenna RCS reduction at working frequency without loss of radiation performance of dipole antenna.