A Co-Polarization Broadband Radar Absorber for RCS Reduction

In this article, a single layer co-polarization broadband radar absorber is presented. Under normal incidence, it achieves at least 90% of absorption from 5.6 GHz to 9.1 GHz for both Transverse Electric (TE) and Transverse Magnetic (TM) polarizations. Our contribution and the challenge of this work is to achieve broadband absorption using a very thin single layer dielectric and it is achieved by rotating the resonating element by 45°. An original optimized Underlined U shape has been developed for the resonating element which provides a broadband co-polarization absorption. The structure is 12.7 times thinner than the wavelength at the center frequency. To understand the absorption mechanism, the transmission line model of an absorber and the three near unity absorption peaks at 5.87 GHz, 7.16 GHz and 8.82 GHz have been used to study the electric and magnetic fields. The physical insight of how the three near unity absorption peaks are achieved has also been discussed. After fabricating the structure, the measurements were found to be in good agreement with the simulation results. Furthermore, with the proposed original UUSR resonating element, the operational bandwidth to thickness ratio of 6.43 is obtained making the proposed UUSR very competitive.