Radome induced wave perturbations are a principal consideration in radome construction. An ideal radome is electromagnetically transparent to a large number of radio frequencies, through a wide range of incident angles. However, in practice, conventional radomes are inherently lossy and are narrowbanded. Moreover, loss generally increases with angle of incidence. Radomes are generally designed to have a lower loss at a specific angle of incidence and a larger loss at the remaining angles. Often, the angle at normal incidence is chosen as the angle of lower loss in a radome design.
Traditionally, the RF loss in radomes is minimized by adjusting the phase factor of the radome at a single radio frequency. For instance, the thickness of a dielectric radome having a given permittivity can be a multiple of half a wavelength at a given frequency. When so formed, a very small reflection coefficient will result at that frequency. Unfortunately, such a radome transmits electromagnetic waves with minimal loss only over a narrow frequency band about a center frequency. In order to overcome this limitation, some radomes are made of several layers of dielectric slabs, so that a broader group of frequencies can be transmitted with low loss.