A Slot Antenna Array with Reconfigurable RCS Using Liquid Absorber

TL;DR

This paper introduces a reconfigurable slot antenna array with liquid absorber that can switch between detection and stealth modes by reducing RCS without significantly affecting radiation performance.

Contribution

It presents a novel liquid absorber integrated with a slot antenna array enabling dynamic RCS reconfiguration over a broad frequency range.

Findings

RCS reduction up to 35 dB from 2.0 GHz to 18.0 GHz

Average RCS reduction of 13.28 dB

Antenna gain decreases by 2 dB when ethanol is injected

Abstract

This paper presents a slot antenna array with a reconfigurable radar cross section (RCS). The antenna system is formed by combining a liquid absorber with a 2*2 slot antenna array. The liquid absorber consists of a polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) container, a 45% ethanol layer, and a metal ground,which is attached to the surface of the slot antenna array. The incident wave can be absorbed by the absorber rather than reflected in other directions when the PMMA container is filled with ethanol, which reduces the monostatic and bistatic RCS. Thus the RCS of the antenna can be changed by injecting and extracting ethanol while the antenna's radiation performance in terms of bandwidth, radiation patterns and gain is well sustained. In a complex communication system, this can be used to switch between detection and stealth mode. The mechanism of the absorber is investigated. The simulated results show that the antenna with this absorber has monostatic and bistatic RCS reduction bands from 2.0 GHz to 18.0 GHz, a maximum RCS reduction of 35 dB with an average RCS reduction of 13.28 dB. The antenna's operating band is 100 MHz. Without ethanol, the antenna has a realized gain of 12.1 dBi, and it drops by 2 dB when the lossy ethanol is injected. The measured results agree well with the simulated ones.