Radar transponder antenna pattern analysis for the space shuttle

In order to improve tracking capability, radar transponder antennas will soon be mounted on the Shuttle solid rocket boosters (SRB). These four antennas, each being identical cavity-backed helices operating at 5.765 GHz, will be mounted near the top of the SRB's, adjacent to the intertank portion of the external tank. The purpose is to calculate the roll-plane pattern (the plane perpendicular to the SRB axes and containing the antennas) in the presence of this complex electromagnetic environment. The large electrical size of this problem mandates an optical (asymptotic) approach. Development of a specific code for this application is beyond the scope of a summer fellowship; thus a general purpose code, the Numerical Electromagnetics Code - Basic Scattering Code, was chosen as the computational tool. This code is based on the modern Geometrical Theory of Diffraction, and allows computation of scattering of bodies composed of canonical problems such as plates and elliptic cylinders. Apertures mounted on a curved surface (the SRB) cannot be accomplished by the code, so an antenna model consisting of wires excited by a method of moments current input was devised that approximated the actual performance of the antennas. The improvised antenna model matched well with measurements taken at the MSFC range. The SRB's, the external tank, and the shuttle nose were modeled as circular cylinders, and the code was able to produce what is thought to be a reasonable roll-plane pattern.