Radomes protect antennas from the weather and other hazards, but they degrade antenna performance, especially in low side lobe antennas, precision DF antennas, and monopulse tracking antennas. Minor fabrication defects like changes in density, inhomogeneities, anomalies, voids, or delaminations can worsen these effects. The key to finding these defects in radomes is nondestructive evaluation (NDE) techniques that have high resolution capability. Flam & Russell, Inc. (FR) proposes a program that will use millimeter waves, with their small wavelengths and potential for wide frequency bandwidths to create a diagnostic system that can isolate small anomalies in radomes with thin and non-planar surfaces. FR will be able to produce such a system because it has nearly 10 years of experience in radar measurements and it is exploiting new technologies such as stable and accurate microwave instruments, powerful signal processing algorithms for imaging and low-cost computers with enormous computational speed. This technology will result in a non-contact NDE system capable of imaging or characterizing radomes up to a few meters in size with submillimeter resolution.
