Chin Yeng Tan

A Performance Comparison of a Ku-Band Conical Horn with an Inserted Cone-Sphere with Horns with an Integrated Dielectric Lens and Metamaterial Loading [Antenna Designer's Notebook]

This article presents a comparative study based on measurements and simulations of a Ku-band conical horn with an inserted metallic cone-sphere with horns having an integrated dielectric lens and meta material loading. The results revealed that the performance of the horn with the cone-sphere was better than that of the metamaterial-loaded horn. The performance of the horn with the cone-sphere was comparable to that of the horn with the dielectric lens. In addition, the horn with the cone-sphere offered advantages of lower weight and cost in comparison to the other horns under consideration.

Derivation of Conditions for the Normal Gain Behavior of Conical Horns

Monotonically increasing gain-versus-frequency pattern is in general expected to be a characteristic of aperture antennas that include the smooth-wall conical horn. While optimum gain conical horns do naturally exhibit this behavior, nonoptimum horns need to meet certain criterion: a minimum axial length for given aperture diameter, or, alternatively, a maximum aperture diameter for the given axial length. In this paper, approximate expressions are derived to determine these parameters.

The metallic cone-sphere-inserted conical horn as an alternative to the dielectric-loaded conical horn

In this work, the recently proposed metallic cone-sphere-inserted conical horn is proposed as an alternative to the hybrid mode dielectric-loaded horn. The proposal is verified by comparing the performance of the two designs in the Ku-band. The comparison leads to the observation that the horn with metallic cone-sphere insert, despite being smaller and simpler than the dielectric-loaded horn, comfortably outperforms the later.

Performance improvement of circular polarized conical horn using metallic cone-sphere insertion

It is shown in this work that the performance of the recently proposed normal circular polarized smooth wall conical horn (CPSWCH) is improved by using metallic cone-sphere insertion. The performance of the proposed circular polarized horn is better than the normal CPSWCH in respect of gain, aperture efficiency, axial ratio, beamwidth and pattern symmetry. The input impedance of the two horns is comparable. The proposed horn may find wide applications in modern satellite, radar, and terrestrial point-to-point communications systems.

Performance comparison of metallic cone-sphere-inserted and dielectric lens-corrected conical horns

This paper compares the performance of metallic cone-sphere-inserted and plano-convex dielectric lens-corrected conical horns. The parameters considered in the study are gain, aperture efficiency, peak cross-polarization, radiation patterns and return loss. It emerges from the comparative study that, in an overall sense, the metallic cone-sphere-inserted conical horn outperforms the lens-corrected horn.

Simulation study of a 4 – 28 GHz double ridged conical horn antenna

The design and simulation-based analysis of a 4-28 GHz double ridged conical horn is presented in this work. While the horn offers a VSWR of less than 1.6 over the entire bandwidth, it also exhibits desirable radiation patterns. More importantly, as per the simulation study, the ridged conical horn gives neat radiation and gain patterns throughout the band unlike the conventional ridged pyramidal horns whose patterns deteriorate at higher frequencies.

Performance Comparison of Pyramidal Horns Loaded with Metal Baffle or with Metamaterial

Two recent methods that have been reported in the literature to improve the performance of pyramidal horns are metal ba†e loading and the use of epsilon-near-zero metamaterial. In this paper, a comparative study of the two methods is undertaken for the case of Ku- and X-band horns. In addition to the simulation study, a C-band metal ba†e loaded horn was fabricated and rigorously characterized. It emerges from the study that E-plane metal ba†e loading improves the radiation characteristics of the horn much better than the loading by metamaterial. Furthermore, the ba†e loading nearly retains the construction simplicity, weight and cost of the normal pyramidal horn.

A dielectric-loaded long conical horn for improved performance

A dielectric-loaded conical horn exhibiting improved radiation characteristics - low cross-polarization and side-lobes levels, pattern symmetry and good front-to-back ratio-is proposed. The dielectric insert is simpler than the ones proposed in two earlier papers, and is therefore easier to design and fabricate. The proposed horn may find wide applications in modern low cost high performance systems.