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Water vapor is one of the most important greenhouse gases in the world. There are many techniques that can measure water vapor directly or remotely. In this work, we first study the Global Positioning System (GPS)- and the Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS)-derived Zenith Wet Delay (ZWD) time series based on 11 years of the second reprocessing campaign of International Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) Service (IGS) using 320 globally distributed stations. The amount of measurement, the local environment, and the antenna radome are shown to be the main factors that affect the GNSS ZWDs and the corresponding a posteriori formal errors. Furthermore, antenna radome is able to effectively reduce the systematic bias of ZWDs and a posteriori formal errors between the GPS- and GLONASS-based solutions. With the development of the GLONASS, the ZWD differences between the GPS- and the GLONASS-based solutions have gradually decreased to sub-mm-level after GLONASS was fully operated. As the GPS-based Precipitable Water Vapor (PWV) is usually used as the reference to evaluate the other PWV products, the PWV consistency among several common techniques is evaluated, including GNSSs, spaceborne sensors, and numerical products from the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). As an example of the results from a detailed comparison analysis, the long-term global analysis shows that the PWV obtained from the GNSS and the ECMWF have great intra-agreements. Based on the global distribution of the magnitude of the PWV and the PWV drift, most of the techniques showed superior agreement and proved their ability to do climate research. With a detailed study performed for the ZWDs and PWV on a long-term global scale, this contribution provides a useful supplement for future research on the GNSS ZWD and PWV.

The word radome is a contraction of radar and dome. The function of radomes is to protect antennas from atmospheric agents. Radomes are closed structures that protect the antennas from environmental factors such as wind, rain, ice, sand, and ultraviolet rays, among others. The radomes are passive structures that introduce return losses, and whose proper design would relax the requirement of complex front-end elements such as amplifiers. The radome consists mostly in a thin dielectric curved shape cover and sometimes needs to be tuned using metal inserts to cancel the capacitive performance of the dielectric. Radomes are in the near field region of the antennas and a full wave analysis of the antenna with the radome is the best approach to analyze its performance. A major numerical problem is the full wave modeling of a large radome-antenna-array system, as optimization of the radome parameters minimize return losses. In the present work, the finite difference time domain (FDTD) combined with a genetic algorithm is used to find the optimal radome for a large radome-antenna-array system. FDTD uses general curvilinear coordinates and sub-cell features as a thin dielectric slab approach and a thin wire approach. Both approximations are generally required if a problem of practical electrical size is to be solved using a manageable number of cells and time steps in FDTD inside a repetitive optimization loop. These approaches are used in the full wave analysis of a large array of crossed dipoles covered with a thin and cylindrical dielectric radome. The radome dielectric has a thickness of ~λ/10 at its central operating frequency. To reduce return loss a thin helical wire is introduced in the radome, whose diameter is ~0.0017λ and the spacing between each turn is ~0.3λ. The genetic algorithm was implemented to find the best parameters to minimize return losses. The inclusion of a helical wire reduces return losses by ~10 dB, however some minor changes of radiation pattern could distort the performance of the whole radome-array-antenna system. A further analysis shows that desired specifications of the system are preserved., Spain, MINECO, grant number FIS2017- 90102-R

This work details a technique tailored to the analysis of complex radome structures based on the non-overlapping separation of two different domains: antenna and radome. Both domains are analyzed isolated using the method of moments with the multilevel fast multipole algorithm (MoM-MLFMA) for the antenna domain and a modified characteristic basis function method with the multilevel fast multipole algorithm approach for the radome domain. An iterative procedure is then applied to compute the effect of each domain over the complementary domain. This approach usually converges into a few iterations, yielding very good results and significant efficiency improvements with respect to other efficient approaches such as a full-wave MoM-MLFMA analysis of the full problem. A realistic test case is included, considering a radome with an embedded frequency selective structure on one of its interfaces. The results show a very good agreement considering only three iterations between domains, requiring only one-third of the CPU-time needed by the conventional approach.

The aim of this contribution is to design and test the lightning protection of an aircraft radome exposed to direct lightning strikes. The influencing parameters are investigated on different radome wall samples equipped with solid and segmented diverter strips. The effectiveness of the lightning interception and protection measures is tested with different high-voltage waveforms and representative high-current pulses. The tests show that reliable radome lightning protection can be achieved by an optimized arrangement of solid and segmented diverter strips, even if the aircraft radome has a huge size, with dimensions up to several meters.

The 94-GHz airborne HIAPER Cloud Radar (HCR) has now been deployed in three major field campaigns. NCAR has developed an extensive set of quality assurance and quality control procedures which are applied to all collected data. Engineering measurements performed both in the laboratory and in an antenna measurement chamber yielded calibration characteristics for the antenna, reflector, and radome. These calibration results are applied during flight, to produce the radar moments available in real-time. However, temperature changes in the instrument during flight affect the receiver gains, leading to some bias in the calibration values applied in real time. Post project, we estimate the temperature - induced gain errors and apply gain corrections to improve the quality of the final data set. In addition, the reflectivity calibration is monitored b comparing sea surface cross section measurements against theoretically-calculated model values. These comparisons confirm that HCR is calibrated to within 1 dB of the theory. A radar echo classification algorithm was developed to identify “cloud echo” and distinguish it from artifacts such as the echo from the surface, transmitter leakage, and a number of other categories. Model reanalysis data and digital terrain elevation data were interpolated to the radar time-range grid of the radar data, to provide an environmental reference. These fields were used for the sea surface calibration and also are made available as an aid for scientific research. The data for the three major field campaigns is available at https://doi.org/10.5065/D6CJ8BV7 (NCAR/EOL Remote Sensing Facility, 2020a, CSET field campaign), https://doi.org/10.5065/D68914PH (NCAR/EOL Remote Sensing Facility, 2020b, SOCRATES campaign), and https://doi.org/10.26023/V9DJ-7T9J-PE0S (NCAR/EOL Remote Sensing Facility, 2020c, OTREC campaign).

A perforated medium (PM) combined with an ultra-wideband frequency selective surface (FSS) is proposed for the antenna radome design, which provides more flexibility in the radome materials selection and processing. The dielectric constant performance of the PM can be improved by perforating air holes through the medium, thus the restrictions of the FSS medium material parameters can be released. A multiscale homogenization method is utilized to calculate the dielectric constant of this PM, and the transmission coefficients of the planar FSS structure at different incidence angles are computed. The PM FSS is then applied in the curved antenna radome. The physical optic method serves to analyze the transmission performance of the curved antenna radome. In order to reduce the computational difficulties and meet the requirements of physical optic computing, the transmission coefficients are obtained as a function of the frequency by the vector fitting method, and the incidence angle dependence is deduced by B spline interpolation. The simulated and experimental radiation patterns with and without the radome are compared and the results show good agreement.

Microwave devices with polarization conversion and band-pass filtering response have great application prospects on radomes. Here, the concepts of band-pass filters and cross-polarization converters are combined to realize a band-pass filtering cross-polarization converter with an extremely high polarization-conversion ratio. Most importantly, the device has an excellent out-of-band rejection level, above 30 and 40 dB for the lower and upper edges, respectively. In addition, the transmission zeros of the passband can be flexibly tuned independently. The band-pass filtering polarization converter was simulated, fabricated, and measured, and the measured results were found to be in good agreement with the simulation results.

The Chang&rsquo, e-5 lunar exploration mission of China is equipped with a Lunar Regolith Penetrating Radar (LRPR) for measuring the thickness and structures of the lunar regolith in the landing area. Since the LRPR is stationary, an ultra-wideband multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) array is designed as a replacement for conventional mobile subsurface probing systems. The MIMO array, with 12 antenna elements and a switch matrix, operates in the frequency band from 1.0 to 4.75 GHz. In this work, the design and layout of the antenna elements were optimized with respect to the lander. To this end, the antenna elements were designed as miniaturized Vivaldi antennas with quarter elliptical slots (i.e., quarter elliptical slotted antenna, or QESA). QESAs are significantly small while being able to mitigate the impact of the lander on antenna electrical performances. QESAs also have a wide operating bandwidth, flat gain, and excellent time domain characteristics. In addition, a high-temperature resistant ultra-light radome with high transmissivity is designed to protect the external antenna array. After calibration, the MIMO array is used to detect targets embedded in volcanic ash. The detection depth reaches 2.5 m, and the detection effect is good.

Inkjet printing technology is widely used in the manufacture of conformal structures, such as load-bearing antennas or frequency-selective surface radomes. It is particularly promising for preparing conductive patterns on non-developable surfaces. Existing printing technologies employ a single nozzle and a five-axis linkage technique for printing, which is time-consuming. In this study, a conformal plane printing technology based on the arrayed nozzle was developed to prepare conductive patterns on a non-developable surface. The technique actualizes fast printing of passive circuits on a conformal surface, such as a microstrip antenna. Compared to printing techniques employing a single nozzle, the proposed method greatly improves the printing efficiency on conformal surfaces. Specifically, we first developed a model for the driver waveforms and the printing injection parameters via simulation. Subsequently, the accuracy of the computational fluid dynamic simulation results was validated by comparing them with the experimental measurements of droplet trajectory captured using a camera. Next, a droplet spreading model was established, considering energy conservation principles. Finally, a conformal surface printing technology using arrayed nozzles was developed based on the injection parameter and droplet spreading models. The effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed printing method were further validated via simulation and experimental tests of return loss.