Adaptive Radome Compensation Using Dither

Abstract

The paper presents a technique for estimating a radar homing missile's radome slope by the use of a nondestructive dither signal on the acceleration command. An easy-to-follow planar example is presented in detail showing how bandpass filtering and common sense are used to extract the radome slope estimate and then compensate for unwanted radome aberration angle effects. Another example is presented showing how Kalman filtering techniques can also be used for the same planar example to estimate the radome slope. Although the Kalman filter approach does not yield superior radome slope estimates, it does provide a solid framework so that the radome slope estimation technique can be extended to the more realistic three dimensional case where cross plane slopes are important. (Author)