A Contoured-Beam Reflector Satellite Antenna Using Two Doubly Curved Circular Polarization Selective Surfaces

Abstract

We present antenna system using a circular polarization selective surface (CPSS) to realize a circular polarization (CP) equivalent to the widely used linear polarization (LP) gridded or dual-gridded reflector (DGR). The CPSS is realized by a multilayer stack of nonresonant anisotropic meander line surfaces, achieving a very wide bandwidth. The CPSS reflection and transmission dyadics are computed using full-wave simulations for all angles of incidence and design frequencies applicable, and the doubly curved reflector surface shapes are optimized in the TICRA POS software. The data are input to the TICRA tools software framework for antenna-system level radio frequency (RF) simulations. A planar CPSS sample was first manufactured and tested to demonstrate the adequacy of the selected multilayer design. A doubly curved reflector demonstrator based on the same technology and with a projected aperture of 750 mm was then designed, manufactured, and tested at Ku-band. While promising, the experimental results emphasize the difficulty of producing an electrically large multilayer doubly curved surface with RF performance equivalent to the original flat design and recommendations are provided to improve further the implementation of the proposed design.