AMRAAM S-Band Telemetry Antenna Theory and Development

Abstract

The Advanced Medium-Range Air-To-Air Missile (AMRAAM) is one of our newest additions to tactical weaponry. Recently the Pacific Missile Test Center (PMTC) was given the responsibility to develop a new telemetry (TM) package for the AMRAAM that is warhead compatible. The difficulty of this undertaking can best be appreciated if one examines a sketch of the missile as shown in figure 1. Note that the sketch reveals a harness cover opposite top dead center (TDC) for flight that extends over 2/3 the length of the missile. Within this cover is housed all interconnect electrical cabling for the missile. It was also within this harness cover that PMTC had to mount the entire TM package including the S-band antenna. Of necessity there had to be an increase in the height of the harness cover in order to accommodate the TM package. However, this increase was held to only 0.10 inches resulting in no significant change to the flight profile. This report deals only with the design and development of the harness cover mounted TM antenna.