Advanced Computational Tools For Rotorcraft Electromagnetics

By Martin Vogel and C. J. Reddy

Simulation can efficiently solve the environmental electromagnetic challenges presented by rotorcraft, including antenna coupling, interference, and radar visibility.

Rotorcraft pose numerous challenges to design engineers, such as proper analysis of the antenna link budget, mitigation of antenna co-site interference, prevention of electromagnetic interference (EMI) with on-board electronic systems, and reduction of radar cross section (RCS). Although all aircraft pose such challenges, for rotorcraft, the rapid movement of the rotors compounds them.

However, a wide range of advanced simulation tools can be applied to rotorcraft electromagnetics. These methods include full-wave solvers like Method of Moments (MoM), Finite Element Method (FEM), and Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD). With MoM, a technique exists to perform the simulation for the main body of the helicopter once, and then to reuse the result for many positions of the blades and/ or locations of the antennas. Given that the computational cost of rigorous methods scales rapidly with the problem size, this technique is particularly valuable for rotorcraft.