Vol.29 No.

JOURNAL OF ELECTRONICS (CHINA)

November 2012

CATIA AIDED RADOME ANALYSIS USING GEOMETRIC

OPTICS METHOD1
Li Gaosheng

Jia Lei

Ming Yongjin

Cao Qunsheng

(College of Electronic and Information Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics,
Nanjing 210016, China)
Abstract In this paper, the Geometric Optics (GO) method using the approximate ray paths coupled with the Computer Aided Tri-dimensional Interface Application (CATIA) meshing modeling are
implemented to analyze the performance of electric large three-dimensional dielectric radome-enclosed
antenna of arbitrary contour shape. The surfaces of the radome are approximated by planar triangular
patches, the influences of various number of patches on power transmission coefficient and Insertion
Phase Delay (IPD) via an ogive and a conical radome are discussed by the hybrid method. The
simulation results indicate that computational error from planar triangular patches can limit in one
percent, meeting the engineering application requirements.
Key words Geometric Optics (GO); Computer Aided Tri-dimensional Interface Application
(CATIA); Radome; Power transmission coefficient; Insertion Phase Delay (IPD)
CLC index

TN82

DOI 10.1007/s11767-012-0885-9

I. Introduction
Radome is defined as a housing that protects
the antenna from environmental conditions such as
storm, dust, rain, lighting, static electricity,
burning sun and so on. In practice, the antenna
radome effects can be observed experimentally
because the basic electrical properties of the radome wall differ markedly from those of air. The
general effects of the antenna radome for studying
are involved far field pattern distortions, power
transmission loss, boresight error and small
sidelobe degradations[1,2].
A number of different electromagnetic analysis
techniques are developed to discuss the effects of
the radome, for example, Geometric Optics
(GO)[2,3], Physical Optics (PO)[3,4], Plane Wave
Spectra (PWS)[5], the method of moments[6], and
also some hybrid techniques[7,8]. Because the GO
method can produce reasonably results for radome-enclosed antennas with the size about five
wavelengths in diameter, and it can be easily im1

Manuscript received data: May 9, 2012; revised date:

August 7, 2012.
Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of
China (No. 61172024).
Communication author: Li Gaosheng, born in 1988, male,
Master. Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China.
Email: lgs_002@163.com.

plemented on personal computer, so the method

have been widely applied to antenna radome engineering design[3,9].
This paper aims to discuss the influences of
different number of patches on power transmission
coefficient and Insertion Phase Delay (IPD) via
some canonical radomes modeled by the CATIA[10].
a complete three-Dimensional (3D) CAD/CAE/
CAM integrated software. In view of the CATIA, it
not only supports curved surface described by
Bezier, B-spline and MURBS special functions, but
also has strong function to fit the surface modeling
in complex radome, so it leads us using it to
modeling of radome surface.
The paper is focus on electrical properties of
the radome using GO method with the CATIA
modeling method, the content is divided mainly
into three parts. GO method is analyzed in Section
II, together with validation of the developed software. The CATIA aided radome analysis using GO
method is outlined in Section III, for the sake of
completeness, finally, the conclusions are summarized in Section IV.

II.

Analysis of GO Method

In GO transmit mode, the antenna aperture is

considered as a collection of sources with arbitrary
amplitude and phase, when a ray runs through the
radome wall, each ray is modified by its amplitude

LI et al. CATIA Aided Radome Analysis Using Geometric Optics Method

and phase, the collection of rays defined an

equivalent aperture outside of the radome which
covers the effects of the radome. The Fourier
transform of the equivalent aperture distribution
produces far field radiation pattern of the radomeenclosed antenna, how each ray is modified is
discussed in the following five steps.
Step 1 To find the intercept point a ray tracing
from an arbitrary point on the antenna aperture
with the radome wall.
Step 2 Up of the intercept point, to find unit
surface normal vector and incident angle corresponding the incident ray.
Step 3 Because the wall is assumed as locally
plane at intercept point, then an arbitrarily polarized electromagnetic wave is decomposed into
two orthogonal components, for example, parallel
and perpendicular wave components,
JG
JG i
JG i
E i = E + E ||
(1)
Step 4 On the basis of four-port network theories[3], parallel and perpendicular components are
obtained from complex voltage transmission coefficient, the parallel and perpendicular components are written as follow, respectively,
JG
T || = T||IPD||
(2)
JG
T = TIPD
(3)
Step 5 Recompose the parallel and perpendicular wave components after the ray propagating the
radome wall, then the transmitted fields are obtained.
JG
JG t
JG t
E t = E + E ||
(4)
JG t
JG i JG
E = E T
(5)
JG t
JG i JG
E || = E || T ||
(6)

As our initial validation example, we choose a

single-layered structure ogive radome with the
vertical polarized antenna being a circular aperture, shown in Fig. 1, which L0 and D0 are the
length and bottom diameter of the ogive radome
respectively. In the ogive radome structure, the
thickness of radome and relative dielectric permittivity are represented as d and r . The antenna
radium is Ra inside of the radome. From Fig. 1, the

563

radome can be described as the following equation,

Fig. 1

Geometry of ogive radome

(B +

y2 + z 2

+ x 2 = R2

(7)

where
B2 =

4L20 D02
4D02

(8-1)

R2 =

4L20 + D02
4D02

(8-2)

In Fig. 2, it is compared with the numerical

result[3] and our result of the power transmission
for an antenna enclosed in the radome with L0 =
609.6 mm, D0 = L0 / 2, Ra = L0 / 3, d = 1.27 mm
and r = 3.0(1 j 103 ), the azimuth and elevation
observation angles both are 0. From Fig. 2, it is
found that our validation result is good agreement
with that of the numerical.

Fig. 2 Power transmission and corresponding reference solution

for an ogive radome

III. Radome Analysis Method Aided

by CATIA
For some symmetric and simple shape radome,

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JOURNAL OF ELECTRONICS (CHINA), Vol.29 No.6, November 2012

normally its contour, like tangent ogive, secant

ogive, von karman and power series, is described by
only one equation. However, for some complicated
shape radome, it needs two more equations to
determine whole contour. Unfortunately for some
radomes, it is difficult to find the exact equations
to represent the radome shape, so we need to
create the model in advance using a computer
aided design software. In our simulations, we
choose the CATIA to create arbitrary model, and
design radome structure including single-layer, A
sandwich and C sandwich, etc.. The flow diagram
is shown in Fig. 3, it is clear that the results of the
power transmission and Insertion Phase Delay
(IPD) and so on are obtained following the calculation processing to satisfy the requirement.

JG
G
JG
r = P0 u + S
G
JG JJG
(r Pj 1 u 1 ) N j = 0

where

(9-1)
(9-2)

JJG
JG G
N j = a b
JG
JG
JG
a = (Pj 2 Pj 1 )(u 2 u 1 )

(10-2)

G
JG
JG
b = (Pj 3 Pj 2 )(u 3 u 2 )

(10-3)

Then
JG

JG

(10-1)

JJG

(Pj 1 P0 )(u 1 u 0 ) N j
JG JJG
Si N j

(11)

Criterion of the true solution is,

= Sj

(12)

k =1,2,3

where Sj is the area of the triangular patch.

Because the contour surface of a radome is
generally meshed into triangular patches, then it is
necessary to discuss the approximation effect of
parch size. As example, the geometry of an ogive
and a conical radome are shown in Fig. 1 and
Fig. 5, respectively.

Fig. 3 Flow diagram for CATIA aided GO method

Normally when using GO method, it needs to

find intercept point for a ray tracing from an arbitrary point on the antenna aperture patch, the
planar triangular patch from the meshes created by
the CATIA, the detail isJGdiscussed below.
As shown in Fig. 4, S i is the unit incident ray
vector, where P0 is a point on the antenna aperture,
Pj1, Pj2,JJGand Pj3 are the vertexes of a triangular
patch, N j is the unit normal vector of the triangular patch, Pj0 is to be solved intercept point,
the unit vectors from the center point to P0 , Pj0,1,2,3,
JG
JG
are u and u 0,1,2,3 , respectively. Then we can get
equations:

Fig. 4 Intercept point a ray with a triangular patch

Fig. 5

Geometry of conical radome

The parameters of the ogive and conical radome are same as that of the validation example in
Section II, but the structure of the ogive radome is

LI et al. CATIA Aided Radome Analysis Using Geometric Optics Method

565

replaced by A sandwich one. Tab. 1 is listed the

thickness and relative permittivity of the A
sandwich structure.
Tab. 1

Parameters of the ogive radome

No.

tan

d (mm)

3.30

5.0104

1.27

1.08

1.0103

2.54

3.30

5.0104

1.27

where the parameter tan is loss angle tangent, d is

thickness of the radome.
Fig. 6 to Fig. 9 are depicted the power transmission and the IPD error for given structures of
ogive and conical radome, respectively, in which
value of Grid is expressed the number of planar
triangular patches created by the CATIA. The
benchmark of the power transmission and IPD
error is the result with radome shape described by
equations or codes, while, validity of the method
have been represented in Section II.

Fig. 8

Power transmission error of the conical radome

Fig. 9 IPD error of the conical radome

Fig. 6

Power transmission error of the ogive radome

It is found from the figures that both the power

transmission and the IPD error are decreased
gradually with the number of patches increased,
and the values two parameters are less than one
percent when the number of patches is larger than
2019 for the ogive radome and 2018 for the conical
radome, respectively. So it is clear validity of the
correctness of the aided CATIA radome method to
assess the radome performance. However, for other
radomes shapes, in order to keep the precision, the
number of patches to divide the radome surface is
possibly larger or smaller than the numbers discussed above, it is decided by the radome surface
complexity, for example, a radome with the slab
shape, two patches is enough, it can be obtained by
the calculation of computational code coupled with
radome test at the first time.

IV. Conclusions

Fig. 7 IPD error of the ogive radome

In the CATIA aided radome analysis, we use

the GO method to study in detail the influences of
various number of patches of the power transmis-

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JOURNAL OF ELECTRONICS (CHINA), Vol.29 No.6, November 2012

sion coefficient and IPD via simulation examples.

The results have shown that the method could be
applied to design arbitrary contour radomes. In
addition, this hybrid method can be extended to
other radome analysis technique, such as physical
optics, hybrid Po-MoM method and so on.

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