Compact range reflectors, in general, are designed so that the parabolic section of the reflector is equal or larger in size than the desired quiet zone size. Next, proper edge treatment (serrated edge or blended rolled edge) is applied to the parabolic section to reduce the diffraction from the rim of the parabolic section in the quiet zone. With proper edge treatment, the reflector size can be bigger than the available space. Thus, there is a need to reduce the overall size of the reflector. In the case of blended rolled edge compact range reflectors, the total surface is a reflecting surface. Also, near the junction between the parabolic section and the edge rolled section, the surface is very close to the parabolic section. Thus, the fields reflected from this part of the reflector are nearly planar and can be used to increase the size of the quiet zone. This, in turn reduces the total size of the reflector. This concept has been applied to design a blended rolled edge reflector for MIT Lincoln Laboratory's new compact range. In this paper, the design approach will be presented and analytical performance of the reflector will be discussed. It will be shown that the over all performance of the reflector is better than the performance of the same size reflectors designed using the conventional approach.
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