Assessment of Artificial Magnetic Conductor Checkerboard-Arranged Applique for Ground System Radar Cross Section Reduction

A potentially effective means for ground system radar cross section reduction (RCSR) involves a checkerboard-arranged applique (ACA) composed of artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) metasurfaces which can result in phase modification – and thus destructive interference – of the reflected radar energy. This effort focused on the development of such a concept through the following main tasks: (1) the development of performance goals; (2) the selection of the AMC topology pattern; (3) the development of various performance models based upon transmission line theory and antenna planar array theory, and the use of various computational electromagnetics (CEM) solvers; (4) model validation; (5) the optimization of the AMC pattern through a design of experiment (DOE) approach; and (6) the development of a genetic programming framework for more rigorous ACA optimization.