Horn array antenna with high aperture efficiency and suppressed grating lobes

Abstract

Abstract In the design of horn array antennas, usually there is a challenge with the grating lobe problem and consequently quite low aperture efficiency. A new configuration for horn array antennas is presented which introduces high aperture efficiency with suppressed grating lobes in both E‐& H‐plane radiation patterns. The proposed array unit cell is a dual‐mode horn loaded by two corrugations in E‐plane. A sample 4 ⨯ 4 array of the proposed unit cell is designed to operate at Ku band. The simulation and measurement results show 13.3% operating bandwidth over which the grating lobes are totally suppressed and the aperture efficiency is above 70%. The antenna measured gain is also 27 dBi with 2 dB variation over the bandwidth. The results show that the aperture efficiency of 98% is achievable making use of the proposed topology.

Keywords

• antenna arrays
• horn antennas