Effect of internal resonance on the radar cross section and shield effectiveness of open spherical enclosures

In this paper, the effects of the internal resonances of an open conducting spherical enclosure with circular aperture on its radar cross section (RCS) and shield effectiveness (SE) are studied over a wide frequency band. The sizes of the spherical enclosures investigated in the present work range from electrically small (perimeter is less than the wavelength) to electrically large (perimeter is up to ten times the wavelength). It is shown that for such an enclosure, both the RCS and SE, as functions of frequency, have sharp spikes, minima, or maxima at the resonant frequencies corresponding to the internal modes of the closed conducting sphere. Principal and higher order modes are considered. The effects of the aperture width on the perturbation of the field inside and outside of the spherical enclosure, the near field outside the cavity, the RCS and the SE are presented over a wide range of frequency. It is shown that the sharpness and amplitude of the spikes, minima, or maxima of the RCS and SE are decreased with increasing the aperture width. Also, the resonant frequencies of the enclosed spherical cavity are shifted with increasing the aperture width. For the purpose of verifying the accuracy of the obtained results for the SE of an open spherical enclosure at resonance, the obtained field configurations and distributions inside a spherical enclosure of a small aperture are compared to those of the spherical cavity modes which have already been obtained analytically. Also, some of the results concerning the RCS of a spherical enclosure are compared to other published results.