Microstrip brings radar to hostile environments

Design techniques have been developed to provide conformal microstrip radar antennas for a variety of missions at acceptable costs. A current-carrying conductor is imprinted on one side of a substrate, on the other side of which is a ground plane. The thinness of the antenna permits its conformal mounting and concommitant high g and mechanical stress resistance. The antenna area is determined by the frequency and bandwidth requirements, e.g., the larger the antenna the lower the frequency. Antennas 0.020 in. thick can be built into the outside of a munitions nose cone. The antennas comprise either grid or patch configurations, with higher radiation density being available from the former, which can be arranged in linear or area arrays. A theoretical model of device performance is defined and compared with experimental results on the effects of substrate thickness, loop size, the number of loops and radiator line widths.