Traditional Horn Antenna Research Articles

A performance enhanced P- and L-band double-ridged horn antenna

With the continuous development of electromagnetic detection systems, the working frequency of radar gradually expands towards the low-frequency band such as P- and L-band, and the low-frequency horn antenna has also attracted more and more attention. Given the problems of miniaturization, lightweight and ultra-wideband design of low-frequency horn antenna, this paper presents the optimal design for the feed balun, ridge curve, back-feed cavity and sidewall of the traditional horn antenna, and proposes a performance-enhanced double-ridged horn antenna covering 0.21-2.3 GHz. In the entire working band, the antenna has stable radiation patterns and good port-matching characteristics; its VSWR is less than 2 and the main lobes of patterns do not split or deteriorate. The proposed horn antenna can be used as a standard calibration or measurement antenna in antenna or material measurement systems.

E-plane sectionalized rectangular horn antenna

The possibility of reducing sidelobe levels (SLLs) of the E-plane radiation patterns of high-gain rectangular horn antennas by modifying the field distribution on the aperture is studied in this paper. A simple and efficient method for controlling the field distribution on the aperture is proposed by sectionalizing the aperture and using conductive plates inside the antenna to obtain the required tapering for SLL reduction. The resulting radiation patterns indicate significant SLL reductions and remarkable gain improvements over a wide bandwidth. Looking from another aspect, the proposed method can be used for SLL reduction and length reduction of high-gain rectangular horn antennas in a wide frequency band. Finally, a prototype of the proposed E-plane sectionalized rectangular horn antenna with 9 sections is fabricated and tested, successfully. The SLL of the proposed antenna compared with traditional horn antennas is reduced from above −15 dB to below −20 dB and the gain is improved by up to 1.8 dB. The measured gain is above 24.5 dB at 10 GHz with 1 GHz bandwidth.

Gain Enhancement of a Traditional Horn Antenna using 3D Printed Square-Shaped Multi-layer Dielectric Lens for X-band Applications

In this work, gain of a traditional horn antenna is enhanced up to 2.9 dB over X-band using 3D printed square-shaped multi-layer lens. For this purpose, firstly the multi-layer lenses are designed using Invasive Weed Optimization (IWO) and simulated in 3-D CST Microwave Studio (MWS) environment as consisting of square-shaped five layers with variable dielectric constants and heights. Thus, optimum values of the dielectric constants and heights are resulted limiting from 1.15 to 2.1 and 9.2 mm to 10 mm, respectively compatible for Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) based 3D-printing process. Finally, the optimum lens is realized by 3D printer via FDM evaluating infill rate of cheap Polylactic Acid (PLA) material for each layer. The simulated and measured performance of the multi-layer dielectric structures are hand to hand. The horn antenna equipped by our proposed dielectric lens achieves gain enhancement of the traditional antenna up to 2.9 dB over the operation band. Furthermore, the proposed design is compared with the counterpart designs in literature and based on the comparison results it can be said that the proposed design achieves the better performance in the smaller in size as equipped a traditional X-band horn antenna.

A Planar Feeding Technology Using Phase-and-Amplitude-Corrected SIW Horn and Its Application

As traditional horn antennas that could be used as feeds for reflector antenna systems, substrate integrate waveguide (SIW) horns could be used as feeds for planar antennas and arrays. In this letter, a phase-and-amplitude-corrected SIW horn by metal-via arrays is presented as a planar feeding structure. The compact SIW horn is applied to feed two $1\times 8$ antipodal linearly tapered slot antenna (ALTSA) arrays, forming sum and difference beams at X-band. The measured gain of the sum beam is 12.84 dBi, the half-power beamwidth is $18.6^\circ $ , the FTBR is 15.07 dB, and the sidelobe level is $-$ 20.79 dB at 10.1 GHz. The null depth of the difference beam is $-$ 44.24 dB. Good agreement between the simulation and the measured results is obtained.

Phase Corrected Substrate Integrated Waveguide H-Plane Horn Antenna With Embedded Metal-Via Arrays

A novel phase corrected substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) H-plane horn antenna with embedded metal-via arrays is presented. The SIW horn is divided into four subhorns by three metal-via arrays inside the horn. A uniform phase distribution of EM field across the horn aperture is achieved by adjusting the lengths and positions of the metal-via arrays. The proposed horn antenna has a compact profile, and its simulated gain is 7.50 dBi at 35.5 GHz, whereas the simulated gain of a traditional horn antenna without the metal-via arrays is 6.38 dBi. When measured, the gain of the proposed horn antenna is 7.87 dBi at 35.5 GHz, whereas the gain of the traditional horn antenna is 5.58 dBi. Good agreement between the simulated and the measured results is obtained.

A 0.7–20-GHz Strip-Fed Bilateral Tapered Slot Antenna With Low Cross Polarization

This letter presents a bilateral tapered slot antenna (BTSA) as a measurement antenna for electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) and antenna measurements. By virtue of the proposed wideband 50-Ω feeding transition and carefully adjusted tapered slot profile, together with the truncation compensation method, the proposed BTSA maintains a single main beam in the radiation pattern across the entire operating frequency band from 700 MHz to 20 GHz rather than main-beam split above 12 GHz, which is suffered by most traditional horn antennas and tapered slot antennas. Also, better than 25 dB cross-polarization level and less than 2:1 VSWR are obtained within the frequency band of interest. The validity of the proposed design is verified experimentally. The proposed BTSA can be applied to EMC and antenna measurement systems or further employed to construct a dual-polarized BTSA for other measurement applications.

Three-dimensional broadband and high-directivity lens antenna made of metamaterials

We present the theoretical modeling and prototype demonstration of a three-dimensional broadband, low-loss, dual-polarization, and high-directivity lens antenna using gradient index (GRIN) metamaterials, which is composed of multi-layer microstrip square-ring arrays. The elements of metamaterials, closed square-ring units of variable sizes, are distributed on the planar substrate to satisfy the radial gradient index function and the axial impedance matching layer configuration of the lens. The gradient-index metamaterials are designed to transform the spherical wave-front into the planar wave-front and to minimize the reflection loss. A prototype lens antenna, which consists of a metal conical horn and the gradient-index lens, are simulated, constructed, and measured. The resemblance of simulation and measurement results shows that the prototype lens antenna maintains low return loss and high directivity on the whole X-band (from 8 GHz to 12 GHz). Compared to the traditional horn antenna, the metamaterial GRIN lens antenna has much superior performance—for instance, the gain increases by 6 dBi at 12 GHz. These results demonstrate the feasibility of such a light weight slab metamaterial lens for broadband and high-directivity antenna applications, such as in radar and communication systems. We have used the lens antennas in the measurements of a three-dimensional invisibility cloak due to the high directivity.