By Brian Woods and Ernst Burger, EM Software & Systems - S.A. (Pty) Ltd.

Modern computational codes provide many useful tools for radar engineers, both in the design and optimization of radars and in the analysis and prediction of radar performance in an operational environment. These are important endeavors when considering how antenna design and scattering influence received power in radar:

It is therefore quite clear that a radar engineer must optimize the gain of the transmitting and receiving antennas to increase received power. On the other hand, an engineer intent on minimizing the return of energy to radar from a vehicle must minimize the RCS. This article will consider how these objectives can be met by applying the full-wave Method of Moments (MoM) or approximated MoM-hybridized techniques to:

• Scattering analysis and signature extraction of radar targets.
• Design of typical radar antennas including array analysis, reflector design and pattern optimization.

A number of examples will be demonstrated, using the commercially available simulation code FEKO [1]. FEKO is a comprehensive, extremely versatile frequency-domain code providing fully integrated MoM, MLFMM, FEM, PO and UTD formulations with an advanced 3D-CAD interface and post-processing capability.

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