A shaped offset-fed dual-reflector antenna

A shaping scheme based on geometric optics for offset-fed dual-reflector antennas is presented. A ray tube emerging from a symmetric feed horn is transformed, after reflections, into a circular beam with a uniform phase and a prescribed radial power distribution on the aperture. In this scheme, Snell's law was not imposed on the main reflector. Based on this approximate solution, computer runs were taken for a 5.5-m dish baseline system, and very satisfactory results were obtained. The system so designed not only gives very low sidelobes but also provides a very high aperture efficiency. At 12 GHz an estimated 84 percent of aperture efficiency was achieved in spite of the severe constraint that the ray intersecting the edge of the main reflector meet a -10-dBi criterion.