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In recent years the need for higher quality RCS calibrations has lead to several different calibration technique investigations, such as squat cylinders, bi-cones and hybrids of both. A desirable calibration technique requires: easy implementation, a known theoretical or calculable solution and minimal interaction. The sphere as a calibration target satisfies two of the three requirements. It has no alignment issues and can be easily calculated, but the sphere-holder interaction introduces several dB of error. To reduce this interaction error, a 3D string-reel support system has been developed and demonstrated that significantly improves sphere calibration accuracy. The string-reel sphere positioning system utilizes low dielectric and highly swept strings to achieve minimal calibration error. An additional benefit of this technique allows for field probing and quick quiet zone evaluations.
The paper deals with the Range Book review process, and describes the evaluation of the National RCS Test Facility (NRTF) RATSCAT Advanced Measurement System (RAMS) Central Measurement System (RCMS) Range Book against the criteria approved by the Range Commander’s Council Signatures Measurement Standards Group (RCC/SMSG). Three RCC/SMSG approved reviewers and one observer were charged with reviewing the processes and procedures documented in the RCMS Range Book against published criteria based on the ANSI-Z540 standard. The paper will concentrate on the processed used by the evaluators to perform their task, the training opportunities afforded the observer, the lessons learned by the evaluation team, and the benefits of the process to both the RCMS site and measurement community at large.
This paper discusses the status of the RCS Measurement Standard, IEEE Standards Project P1502. This standard (actually a “recommended practice”) is sponsored by the Antenna Standards Committee of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (Mike Francis, 2004 Chair). The title is “Recommended Practice for Radar Cross Section Test Procedures”. The standard is being generated by the Radar Cross Section Subcommittee of the IEEE AP-S Antenna Standards Society (Dr. Eric Walton, 2004 Chair). The RCS Measurement Practice Standard is being written for the personnel responsible for the operation of a test range, and not for the design of such a range. The purpose of this presentation is to give the community an update on our progress. The briefing will also review the contents and direction the document is heading. We solicit input from members of the community with a goal of getting the document released for general review within the IEEE and publication within the next year.
As antennas become more complex, their test requirements are also becoming more complex, requiring more data to fully evaluate the performance of today’s modern antennas. At the same time, competition and time-to-market concerns are driving the need to reduce the cost of test for most antenna test facilities. This places stringent demands on our test facilities, personnel, and resources. To be competitive, new and creative ways are needed to meet these new demands. Fortunately, technology is changing, and these advances in technology if properly applied, can provide a way to reduce total test times and increase the productivity of test ranges. This paper will look at this new technology and examine how it can be applied to antenna measurements to significantly reduce measurement times. This paper will describe new technology features applicable to antenna/RCS measurements, configuration diagrams, typical antenna/RCS measurement scenarios, and measurement time comparisons for the different measurement scenarios. This will allow antenna test professionals to determine the measurement time reductions and productivity gains that can be achieved for their specific measurement ranges and test scenarios.
Field level RCS measurements are difficult to perform in rugged, unimproved environments, even under the best of conditions. Recently, NASA tasked AFRL to measure the scattering characteristics of a Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) Booster Separation Motor (BSM) Plume at China Lake's "Skytop" Measurement Facility, as part of characterizations needed to return the Shuttle to safe flight. AFRL's Mobile Diagnostic Laboratory (MDL) was used to measure the RCS of six sequential BSM plume firings, a major technical challenge since each burn lasts only 0.8 seconds. The residual smoke plume RCS was also measured during the post firing period. The experimental set up and scattering results are described.
We present a first-order analysis of the RCS errors resulting from non-uniform ground-bounce illumination in mobile, ground-to-ground, diagnostic RCS measurements of aircraft. For the case of a non-planar ground surface, these errors are a function of both aspect angle and position on the target. We quantify the errors in terms of their impact on the sector mean RCS as a function of position on the target. For typical targets, we show that the mean RCS error increases significantly for points displaced (either horizontally or vertically) from the calibration point. Conversely, the sector mean RCS is relatively insensitive to small-scale variations in the height of the ground, even though the errors at a single frequency and aspect angle can be quite large.
The National RCS Test Facility (NRTF) has measured radar cross section (RCS) of fixed wing aircraft for many years. In order to expand our testing options at the NRTF Mainsite test facility, the NRTF has developed a rotorcraft measurement capability. The design is compatible for use with our 50-foot pylon, but unlike existing rotators, allows for RCS measurement of test articles that require significant forward and aft target pitches. Target mounting and positioning was not the only challenge. Our new capability required the control and collection of rotor blade position information, in addition to the control and collection of traditional target azimuth and elevation data. Modification of our existing acquisition software and command and control systems was also required. In order to maintain the integrity of the NRTF’s calibration processes and enable the use of existing calibration devices, hardware was constructed to enable mounting of these devices to the spindle system. Other important considerations that influenced the design and implementation of the spindle mount capability include cost effective mounting/dismounting of test articles (to include the targets and calibration devices) safety of the test articles and personnel, and the effective determination of backgrounds.
In general, the RF test setups of antenna test facilities are designed and optimized for antenna pattern and gain measurements. However, the operation of test facilities, especially the here considered 'Double Reflector Compact Ranges', can be extended, so that they can also be used for RCS testing. A simple and very practical expansion of the RF antenna test setup - while maintaining the real-time capability - can be achieved with the aid of a hardware gating system. With this type of setup, RCS measurements have successfully been performed in the Compensated Compact Ranges of EADS Astrium. The applied gating system was the high resolution Hard- gating System HG2000 of EADS Astrium, developed together with the Munich Univ. of App. Sciences. Within this paper, the applied facility and the gating system will be described firstly. Subsequently, the modified test setup and the test results obtained by calibration measurements will be shown. They will give an indication of the achievable resolution for the extended test system w.r.t. object size detection and resulting amplitude dynamic range.
CAMELIA is one of the three anechoïc chambers of the French Atomic Energy Center (CEA). It is equipped with a compact range reflector and a pulsed radar allowing antenna and RCS measurements from 800 MHz to 18 GHz. Below 800 MHz, measurements are made with different kind of antennas (log- periodic, horns, arrays…). Nevertheless, measurements at such low frequencies suffer from serious artifacts due to coupling effects. This paper describes a particular array we designed, realized and characterized to cover the 100 MHz – 2000 MHz bandwidth. Although the antenna diagram shape was the most constraining factor, the ability to cover the whole bandwidth with as few handling as possible was the major issue.
A prototype design of the dielectric rod antenna is discussed. This novel design is suitable for nearfield probing application in that it provides broad bandwidth, dual-polarization and low RCS. The design details are provided in this document along with measurement data associated with important antenna characteristics such as VSWR and far-field radiation pattern
New results are presented on using small spheres mounted on a foam tower for calibration. Subtraction of the foam tower response is found to be necessary and sufficient for the dual-calibration method to work.
New RCS data on two-sphere in rotation are presented. From the simple geometry, the results allow us to verify both the cross-range and down-range distance scales in imaging. With the known RCS of the individual spheres, we find that it is feasible to calibrate the image RCS scale to dBsm, provided when care is taken to mitigate the shadowing and sidelobe effects.
A calibration uncertainty analysis was conducted for the Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) Advanced Compact Range (ACR) in 2000. This analysis was a key component of the Radar Cross Section (RCS) ISO-25 (ANSI-Z-540) Range Certification Demonstration Project. In this analysis many of the uncertainty components were argued to be small or negligible. These arguments were accepted as being reasonable based on engineering experience. Since 2000 the ACR radar has been replaced with an Aeroflex Lintek Elan radar system. A new measurement uncertainty analysis was conducted for the ACR using the Elan radar and for a general (non-calibration) target. We present results comparing the previous results to the current analysis results.
We have been developing an uncertainty analysis of RCS calibrations and measurements in the 2 – 18 GHz range at the Etcheron Valley RCS outdoor ground-bounce facility. In this study we report on the results of the uncertainty analysis primarily at 11.3 GHz, but results at some other frequencies are also discussed. We plan to address all components of uncertainty, and present here in some detail the procedures used to determine the uncertainties due to nonplanar illumination, drift, noise-background and nonlinearity. We use a measurement-based approach to obtain upper-bound estimates for the component uncertainties, which are combined using root-sumsquares (RSS) to obtain the overall uncertainty. The uncertainties at any frequency can be determined using these measurement procedures.
This paper describes the RCS measurement test facilities, CHEOPS, STRADI and SOLANGE which are operated in the Technical Center for Information Warfare (CELAR) in France, with a particular focus on SOLANGE. CHEOPS is an anechoïc chamber convenient for the measurement of small missiles as well as antennas measurement. STRADI is an outdoor facility, which is convenient for measurement of land vehicles, helicopters and large antennas. SOLANGE is an indoor RCS measurement facility used to measure long missiles and aircraft. Originally built in 1985, SOLANGE has been continuously upgraded to fulfill all customers requirements in the field of RCS measurement. Thanks to the in house radar instrumentation and data processing software, SOLANGE can reach a very good performance on small or big RCS targets from 200 MHz to 18 GHz. The UHF/VHF capacity has been recently enhanced thanks to the upgrade of the positioning system and the cooperation between CELAR and CEA.
Highly accurate antenna and payload measurements in antenna test facilities require highly accurate alignment and boresight determination. The Angle of Arrival (AoA) of the plane wave field in the quiet zone of the CCR Compensated Compact Range CCR 75/60 of EADS Astrium GmbH, installed at Alcatel Space in Cannes . France, has been measured using three different methods (optical geometrical determination using theodolites, Radar Cross Section (RCS) maximization, planar scanner phase plane alignment). The proposed paper describes the three methods and the performed measurement campaign and provides the correlation between the resulting angles via a comparison of the results. The achieved absolute worst case values of lower than 0.005° demonstrates the high level of accuracy reached during the campaigns.
A compact radar cross section (RCS) test range for scale model measurements is being developed. The test range is based on a phase hologram that converts the feed horn radiation to a plane wave needed for RCS determination. The measurements are performed at 310 GHz using continuous wave operation. A monostatic configuration is realized using a dielectric slab as a directional coupler. The main advantage of a scale model RCS range is that the dimensions of radar targets are scaled down in proportion to the wavelength. Therefore, RCS data of originally large objects can be measured indoors in a controlled environment. So far simple test objects such as metal spheres have been measured. The feasibility of the phase hologram RCS range has been verified. The basic operation and first measurement results of the monostatic measurement range are reported here.
In a previous AMTA paper [1], we presented a firstprinciples algorithm called wavenumber migration (WM) for estimating a target’s far-field RCS and/or far-field images from extreme near-field linear (1-D) or planar (2-D) SAR measurements, such as those collected for flight-line diagnostics of aircraft signatures. However, the algorithm assumes the radar antenna has a uniform, isotropic pattern on both transmit and receive. In this paper, we describe a modification to the (1-D) linear SAR WM algorithm that compensates for nonuniform antenna pattern effects. We also introduce two variants to the algorithm that eliminate certain computational steps and lead to more efficient implementations. The effectiveness of the pattern compensation is demonstrated for all three versions of the algorithm in both the RCS and the image domains using simulated data from arrays of simple point scatterers.
The task of performing reliable RCS measurements in complex environments under near-field conditions is gaining more and more interest, mainly for a rapid assessment of RADAR performance of constructive details. This paper describes a low-cost compact measurement system fully developed by IDS, that allows fast and effective acquisition of diagnostic images under nearfield conditions and far-field RCS estimation in a nonanechoic environment. The hardware of the system is composed of a planar scanner, two horn antennas, a Vector Network Analyzer and a computer. The two axes scanner allows 2D scanning of antennas in a vertical plane. For each point of a predefined grid along the scanned area, the Analyzer performs a frequency scan. The acquisition software synchronizes scanner movements with data acquisition, transfer and storage on the computer’s HDD. The software has post-processing capabilities as well. A number of focusing algorithms permit to produce 2D and 3D diagnostic images of the target as well as 2D backprojection. It is moreover possible to reconstruct the RCS starting from near-field images. Along with system features, a summary of performances and some simple targets images are presented.
Monostatic backscatter measurements made in the near-field have been used to generate high resolution images of complex targets; however, the appropriate use of this data for obtaining far-field RCS values needed further examination. In this paper we comment on some of the available methods, and discuss in some more detail the concept that Fourier Transform of monostatic backscatter data collected over a planar array indeed provides samples in Fourier Space directly.