Analysis of a conical horn fed by a slightly oversized waveguide

Abstract

This paper discusses the case of a submillimetre conical feedhorn system which is overmoded due to an oversized waveguide, but is not in the geometric optics regime. The motivation for this system is to use the same feed as a multi-frequency receiver. Increased background loading is the greatest disadvantage in overmoded optics; and aperture efficiency also suffers due to non-optimum horn dimensions. The analysis is done using the Laguerre-Gauss beam expansion method.