Coaxial feeds for high aperture efficiency and low spillover of paraboloidal reflector antennas

Abstract

Coaxial feeds produce an approximate sector-shaped pattern, an almost optimum pattern of a feed for high aperture efficiency and low spillover of paraboloid antennas. Such a coaxial feed consists of a central circular waveguide which is surrounded by one or more conductors with circular cross sections. Theoretical and experimental investigations on coaxial feeds excited by H <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">11</inf> modes have shown that the first ring yields the highest increase in the aperture efficiency of paraboloid antennas illuminated by them. Measurements performed on paraboloid antennas illuminated by a coaxial feed with only one ring yielded aperture efficiencies of 68 to 75 percent for angular apertures of the paraboloidal reflector of <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">100\deg</tex> to <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">160\deg</tex> . Circularly symmetric patterns in conjunction with almost linearly polarized aperture fields can be achieved by multimode coaxial feeds. The values for the aperture efficiency, which are calculated for paraboloid antennas illuminated by multimode coaxial feeds, nearly reach the theoretical optimum. The measured values are 68 to 80 percent. In addition, the multimode feeds produce very little cross polarization.