Characterisation of Flexible C_9H_9AIO_6 EM Material for sUAV’s Shielding and Stealth Applications

In the near-future, electronic warfare (EW) and radar technology completely rely on the stealthiness and shielding of the targets and our own electronic detection/communication systems. Therefore, it is necessary to design an appropriate material, more preferably painting/coating, that is flexible, lightweight, giving good stealthiness (reduces the radar cross section (RCS))/good shielding (reduces the RF transparency) over a band of RF frequency, becomes significant to protect the military equipment from RF detections/damages. The coating material with flexibility and less-weightiness is more preferred for application of improving the stealthiness of, particularly, small unmanned aerial vehicles (sUAV). In our research work, two sets of samples of specialized C_9H_9AIO_6 polyester membrane is prepared by coating anodized aluminum and acrylic resin on the polyester base sheet, where the thickness of the coating is set as 0.2 and 0.25, respectively. The newly designed material is subjected to waveguide measurement (WGM), and open area test site (OATS) measurement to examine their RF characteristics for the X-band frequencies. The characterization of designed materials is analyzed in terms of S-parameters, reflection/absorption/transmission coefficients, total shielding, and RCS reduction. The minimum achieved reflection and transmission coefficients in the WGM test are − 25.4 dB, and − 0.8 dB, respectively, while the same in the OATS test are − 69.21 dB and − 66.33 dB, respectively. The minimum obtained shielding effectiveness (SE) due to reflection, absorption, and total SE are − 0.07 dB, − 0.68 dB, and − 0.72 dB, respectively, in the WGM test and − 7.36E−6 dB, − 55.6 dB, and − 55.65 dB, respectively, in OATS test experiments. Further, the achieved RCS reduction level falls in the range of 27 m^2 to 60 m^2 over the entire X-band when compared with the RCS of the reference rectangular plate. The design approach of our new material, their fabrication procedures, and their experimentation methodologies are presented. Experimental data collected from the WGM and OATS experiments are analyzed, and the statistical results are reported. The near-future research scopes based on our newly designed materials, to increase its shielding/stealth effectiveness further, are also listed.