Corrugated horn for increased power captured by illuminated aperture

摘要

A feed horn (1) for transmitting and receiving signals comprises a throat section (110) for converting the TE11 mode to the HE11 mode, an aperture section (130) opposite to the throat section (110), and a multiple-corrugation transition section (120) connected to the throat section (110). The transition section (120) comprises a plurality of radial corrugations (121) that substantially widen the feed horn (1) from the throat section (110) toward the aperture section (130) wherein the throat section (110), the aperture section (130) and the transition section (120) have a same axis of symmetry. The profile of horn corrugations (111, 121) is specially designed or tuned to maximize the amount of power captured by an illuminated reflector or lens and avoid excitation of bound states of electromagnetic energy in the horn (1) over the operating frequency band(s) of the horn. As a result of the increased captured power, for a given reflector- or lens-edge illumination taper, thereby also sidelobe-suppression level, the peak power gain of the reflector or lens increases while the peak power gain of the illuminating horn itself decreases. The present radially-corrugated horn may be used in wide- or multi-band reflector or lens antennas that would benefit from reduced frequency dependence of radiation patterns of the conventional radially-corrugated horn.