Technique For Monopulse Antenna With Improved Sidelobe Suppression In Both Sum And Difference Pattern

Last decade has seen the development of slotted-array antenna as they are the most preferred missile antenna, as they offer several significant advantages such as thin profile, light weight and ease of stabilisation. To achieve high speed tracking accuracies within fraction of a beam width, monopulse antenna is the chosen configuration. For look-down mode applications, aperture distributions capable of generating narrow beam along with low side levels are predominantly used to avoid clutter, jamming and possible detection through sidelobes. However, high sidelobes in the difference pattern increases the radar's susceptibility to interference from background clutter or other off-axis sources of radiation which results in tracking error and loss of efficiency. This paper reviews some of the techniques commonly used and demonstrates a simple yet effective technique to achieve low difference sidelobe in the difference pattern without compromising on the gain of the antenna. Keyword : Monopulse Difference pattern, low side lobe level