Estimation of RCS for a Perfectly Conducting and Plasma Spheres

Abstract

This paper presents about plasma technology when the plasma is applied on a simple target, like Sphere and its Radar Cross Section (RCS) is computed with respect to the parameters like size, wave frequency and plasma frequency and compared its RCS with a perfectly conducting sphere (Gao Y et al, The calculation of back-scattering radar cross section of plasma spheres. Institute of Electronic Engineering, Hefei, IEEE (2000) [1]). The RCS of a perfectly conducting sphere has been computed using Mie scattering series with a relation given by Kerr DE, Propagation of short radio waves. McGraw-Hill, Newyork (1951) [2]. The analysis given in this is based on spherical polar scattering geometry (SPSG) in which the scattering parameters (a ^s_n ), (b ^s_n ) are defined. The physical interpretation of scattering coefficients aids in visualizing the mechanism of the scattering process. In this paper, not only the RCS of a perfectly conducting Sphere is computed at different frequencies with particular diameter but also the RCS of a perfectly conducting sphere is computed for various diameters at different bands of frequencies. Theoretically computed electron volume density and current density of plasma at a particular plasma frequency for an Argon gas and also RCS comparison is made for a plasma sphere and perfectly conducting sphere at standard dimensions (Skolnik MI, Introduction to Radar Systems. McGraw-Hill, Newyork (1962) [3]) in which RCS is very less for plasma sphere when compared to perfectly conducting sphere. The plasma cover on the targets helps in getting less RCS and also makes the target unseen by the enemy Radar called Active Stealth Technology. RCS treatment in this paper is based on Radar frequencies ranging from 0.1 to 40 GHz.