Increasing the radar cross section using phase array antenna in the body structure of miniature air-launched decoy platforms

Since the past years, intensive work has been carried out to strengthen the air defense systems and to mislead the enemy. Decoys have a crucial role in the electronic countermeasure and deception concepts, and many works and developments have been realized over the past few decades. The most impressive one is the miniature air-launched decoy (MALD)s. They mimic the radar signatures and flight patterns of the fighters to create the appearance of an attack in enemy airspace. However, they resemble the emission of the fighters; their radar detection probabilities are lower than fighters due to their low radar cross-section (RCS)s. Thus, the emission and the MALD system's RCS must resemble a fighter. This study presents a method for increasing the RCS of MALD systems by using phased array antennas. So, a different approach is developed for covering the surface of the MALD platform with a phased array antenna with using ANSYS HFSS. The increased MALD system's RCS has been compared with the fighter's RCS, and satisfactory results have been obtained.