A dielectric hybrid mode antenna feed: A simple alternative to the corrugated horn

A hybrid-mode horn antenna has been analyzed theoretically and experimentally. It consists of a conical metal horn with a dielectric core inside, separated from the metal wall by another dielectric layer with lower permittivity than for the core material. It is characterized by a very simple design and excellent electrical performance. The horn can support the balanced hybrid HE11-mode, and exhibits low cross polarization and low sidelobes over a wide frequency range. Compared to corrugated horns, the new horn has a simpler design, is easier to analyze, and has the potential of similar cross-polar bandwidth as for corrugated horns with ring-loaded corrugations. Drawbacks are the effects of dielectric losses. Thus the new horn represents an attractive alternative to the corrugated horn antenna.     

Compact low-cross-polarization horn antennas with serpentine-shaped taper

A compact horn with low cross polarization component less than -35 dB over 5% frequency bandwidth has been obtained by optimizing the taper configuration. To reduce the gain loss caused by spherical wavefront in a short length horn with a large flare angle, a serpentine-shaped taper successfully generates five higher-order modes. Such a taper configuration is represented by varying lengths of various uniform waveguides in stepwise approximation, while keeping the dimension of each step discontinuity constant. As a result, the computational time for obtaining the proposed horn is greatly reduced because scattering matrices of the step discontinuities are pre-calculated before the optimization. The verification of its high performance has been performed numerically and experimentally.     

Radiation field consideration of biconical horn antenna withdifferent flare angles

The radiation fields of a biconical horn antenna with different flare angles are computed from both the fields of an equivalent Huygens source on the spherical-surface aperture and the infinite biconical horn antenna with spherical transverse electromagnetic wave. Numerical data and experimental results are first presented for the symmetrical biconical horn antenna ka=1.57 and 3.14 (where k is the propagation constant and a=cone length) with equal flare angle. Curves of the beamwidth versus cone length are then given for various flare angles. At flare angles above 75°, the beamwidth increases with the cone length, while at flare angles below about 75°, the beamwidth decreases with the cone length in this region of ka. For the asymmetrical biconical horn antenna, with two different flare angles (including a conical coaxial type and a discone type), the numerical and the experimental patterns are both presented. For the asymmetrical biconical horn antenna, the pattern main lobe direction, with respect to the antenna axis, may be adjusted by using suitable flare angles     

Parametric analysis of flare edge rolling throat bending and asymmetric flare effects for H-plane horn radiator

In this paper, radiation characteristics of H-plane sectoral horn antenna are treated systematically by investigation of main structural design parameters and, flare edge rolling, throat bending and asymmetric flare effects. The analytical regularization method (ARM) is used to solve the problem of E-polarized wave diffraction in a fast and accurate way. The numerical procedure is initially verified by the analytical solutions, and then the calculated directivity gain patterns are demonstrated for the modeled horn antenna configurations. Proper choices of the antenna parameters, such as horn depth, aperture length, feeder waveguide width, flare angle, wall thickness, flare edge rolling and throat bending are proposed for the designers to reach high directivity gain, narrow beam width, suppressed side lobe levels, increased front-to back ratio and improved aperture efficiency.     

Cross polarization caused by perturbed circular cross sections of waveguides and horn antennas

The cross polarization caused by a perturbed cross section of the conical hybrid-mode horn is analyzed. The perturbed cross section is assumed to be slightly elliptical. The theory previously presented for cross polarization in a smooth-walled waveguide supporting theTE_{11}- mode is referred and applied to theHE_{11}-mode as well. Simple analytical formulas which are sufficiently accurate for small ellipticites of the cross-section ellipse are presented. These show that the tolerances on the waveguide diameter are extremely strong, typically on the order of 2 to4 times 10^{-2}mm in the horn throat for typical horn geometries at 12 GHz.     

Broad-band elliptical beamshape horns with low cross polarization

Horn antennas with an elliptical beam and low cross polarization are discussed. A new class of elliptical-beamshape horns has been investigated. The horns are based on the dielectric core approach, using a dielectric core inside a smooth-walled horn. Horns with rectangular as well as elliptical cross sections have been studied. Experiments show that they have considerably larger cross-polar bandwidth than that obtained from corrugated horns with an elliptical beam. They are also potentially much cheaper to manufacture     

Design and numerical simulation of miniaturised COBRA lens horn

Proposed is a novel miniaturisation method of a coaxial beam-rotating antenna (COBRA) lens horn for high power application. Generally, a miniaturised horn increases the phase error at the aperture because of large flare angle which causes gain decrease. However, since the proposed COBRA lens horn compensates phase error with a modified COBRA lens, radiation characteristics such as gain and radiation pattern of the miniaturised COBRA lens horn are similar to the conventional one while the length of the horn is reduced by more than 50%.     

Diffraction by wide-flare-angle corrugated conical horns

Expressions for the diffracted far field of a wide-flare-angle corrugated conical horn (operating on the HE11 mode) have been obtained making use of a simpler expression for the aperture field. Expressions for the radiation pattern and gain reduce to a closed form when the flare (semivertical) angle is less than 30°. The theoretical results are in close agreement with experiment.     

A novel horn radiator with high aperture efficiency and low cross-polarization and applications in arrays and multibeam reflector antennas

A step horn structure is presented that yields about 90% aperture efficiency with low cross-polar radiation. It is found that for obtaining high aperture efficiency, the horn aperture should consist of only the TE/sub z/ type of modes in appropriate amplitudes and phases. The desired TE/sub z/ modes are produced using multiple steps in the horn walls. The distances between the steps are critical to suppress the undesired TM/sub z/ modes. Radiation characteristics of high efficiency circular and square horns are presented and potential applications of such high efficiency horns are discussed.     

Radiation from conical horns with large flare angles

Radiation patterns of conical horns with large flare angles excited in theTE_{11}mode are calculated from a simple solution for horn modes using the vector diffraction formula. Radiation patterns are expressed in closed form when the half-flare angle is less than30deg. Patterns obtained by experiment show close agreement with calculated results.     

On the cross polarization of asymmetric reflector antennas for satellite applications

It is well known that focussed, axial symmetrical reflector antennas collimate the co- and cross-polar components of the primary field separately, i.e., the reflector does not create a contribution to the cross polarization of the far-field. By a simple extension of a classical physical argument it is demonstrated that this separability does not depend on the symmetry of the antenna, and that it, therefore, holds even for off-set fed reflectors. A new mathematical formulation of the collimation is derived in which this is shown. Yet the separability does depend on how the co- and cross-polar fields are defined, and the cross polarization of feeds for asymmetric reflectors is discussed in detail in the light of this. It is further suggested how to design low cross polarization feeds for off-set fed antennas. As a consequence of the separate collimation such feeds will lead to low cross-polarization of the secondary fields. Two simple examples are treated. The only limitations of the results are those due to the application of the aperture field version of the physical optics approximation.     

Characterization of corrugated feed horns at 216 and 300 GHz

We present measurements of the near-field beam profiles of two corrugated feed horns with center frequencies of 216 and 300 GHz. Both co-polar and cross-polar components of the electric field have been probed across the operation band of the horns. A full-wave numerical near-field transformation, based on a vector Kirchhoff integral, is implemented to transform the measured field to the horn aperture for a comparison with the ideal aperture field. From the overlap integral of the transformed and the ideal field, we conclude that the field radiated by these horns is the HE₁₁ mode, to a purity of better than 99%.     

Depolarization properties of offset reflector antennas

The cross polarized radiation for linearly polarized excitation and the beam displacement for circularly polarized excitation have been investigated for offset reflector antennas. Numerical calculations are given to illustrate the dependence upon the angletheta_{0}between the feed axis and the reflector axis as well as upon the half-angletheta_{c}subtended at the focus by the reflector. In the casetheta_{0} = theta_{c} = 45deg, measured results have been obtained for both linearly and circularly polarized excitations with a dual mode feed illuminating an offset paraboloid. The cross polarized radiation of horn reflector and open Cassegrainian antennas rises sharply to rather high values off the beam axis; however, in general, the maximum cross polarized radiation of offset reflector antennas can be made small by using a small angle between the feed and reflector axes. The cross polarization caused by offset is compared with that caused by an unbalanced feed pattern. The effect of the longitudinal current distribution and of departure of the surface from a paraboloid on cross polarization are also examined. The clarification of these cross polarization properties is found to be valuable in the design of reflector antennas.     

A new multimode rectangular horn antenna generating a circularly polarized elliptical beam

A multimode circularly polarized rectangular horn antenna generating an elliptical shaped beam is described. This antenna operates in two orthogonal mode sets, namely the TE10+ TE/TM12and TE01+ TE/TM21modes. By virtue of the higher order TE/TM modes, the apertureE-field distribution can be tapered such that the effectiveE-plane far-field beam width is approximately equal to theH-plane beam width of the other orthogonal set of modes, resulting in low off-axis polarization axial ratio. Because of the tapered aperture distribution, the radiation patterns also have low sidelobes. The elliptical cross section beam is a direct result of the rectangular shaped aperture. This antenna, used in conjunction with a spacecraft to illuminate an elliptical zone on the earth surface, offers high edge-of-coverage gain, low sidelobes, low edge-of-coverage (EOC) axial ratio, less RF sensitivity to the space environment, and low cost. The performance of this antenna has been evaluated experimentally.     

Complex radiation patterns of dual mode pyramidal horns

The radiation patterns of the dual mode horn and its related performance are influenced by the phase difference between component modes at the horn aperture and the phase distribution associated with the horn flare angle. Both effects are shown to deteriorate beam symmetry and increase sidelobe levels. Radiation pattern functions and fractional power distributions associated with the dual mode pyramidal horn are illustrated for a range of mode and distribution phase errors.     

Domain decomposition FDTD algorithm for the analysis of a new type of E-plane sectorial horn with aperture field distribution optimization

In this paper, a universal and efficient approach of domain decomposition finite-difference time-domain FDTD (DD-FDTD) is presented for the analysis of a new type of horn antenna-E-plane sectorial horn with field amplitude taper and phase correction in the aperture. The power fed into the horn is redistributed to achieve the optimal field amplitude distribution in the aperture, and meanwhile the field phase is corrected by metal lens. Compared with conventional E-plane sectorial horns, the new horn antenna takes the advantages of low sidelobe level, short physical length and wide flare angle etc. Moreover, the most important property of this horn is the weak coupling with each other when it is used as the element of a phased array antenna. The field analysis of such a horn antenna is an extremely complicated three-dimensional EM boundary value problem. The domain decomposition FDTD method is presented in this paper to break through the drawback. The whole horn is decomposed into several subdomains and the meshes are created in local coordinates. In the iteration procedure of FDTD, the data are exchanged between adjacent subdomains with overlapped meshes. The aperture field distribution, voltage standing-wave ratio and pattern calculated by the DD-FDTD method are in good agreement with the experimental data.     

Small corrugated conical-horn antenna with wide flare angle

The radiation pattern of a small corrugated conical horn with a wide flare angle has been calculated by means of a Kirchhoff-Huygens integration. An assumption was made about the phase relationbetween the TE and the TM parts of the spherical hybrid mode in the horn. The solutions of the characteristic equation became dependent on the electrical length of the horn. Calculations and experiments showed a good agreement.     

Co-polar and cross-polar diffraction images in the focal plane of paraboloidal reflectors: A comparison between linear and circular polarization

Equations for the co-polar and cross-polar fields in the focal plane of paraboloidal reflectors when excited by a plane wave are derived for linear and circular polarization, it is shown that for linear polarization the co-polar diffraction image consists of an elliptically shaped bright region followed by dark and bright zones. On the other hand, the cross-polar image consists essentially of four bright spots separated by a dark cross. These theoretical findings were confirmed by measurements. With circular polarization the co-polar diffraction image comprises a bright central circle followed by dark and bright rings, whereas the cross-polar image consists of a dark central circle followed by bright and dark rings. It is also shown that the field distribution in the image space is affected to a great extent by the angular semiaperturepsi'. Graphs of the variation of the image characteristics withpsiare also given.     

Optimizing multimode horn feed arrays for offset reflector antennasusing a constrained minimization algorithm to reduce cross polarization

This letter presents an algorithm for suppressing the cross polarization of single offset reflector antennas illuminated by a cluster of multimode horn feeds using a constrained minimization routine. The design variables are the mode ratios for the higher order modes excited in the feeds relative to the dominant TE₁₁ mode. The goal is to systematically determine the optimum mode ratios such that the overall crosspole performance of the reflector antenna improves relative to the single TE₁₁ mode excitation. The multimode horns considered are Potter-type (dual mode) horns and trimode horns     

具有双槽结构模变换器的双频段波纹喇叭

从双频段波纹喇叭的辐射特性出发,确定了喇叭的口面参数,设计了喇叭的辐射段、变角段和光壁过渡段,并用球面波展开法计算其辐射方向图。研究了双槽结构模变换器不同的角度对喇叭的回波损耗、辐射特性及工作带宽的影响。设计了Ku/Ka双频段波纹喇叭,E面和H面辐射方向图保持良好的等化,回波损耗在Ku频段优于22 dB,在Ka频段优于30 dB。