Designing shaped offset Gregorian reflector systems to operate with several interchangeable feed horns, over frequency bandwidths of more than a decade, with multiple, often conflicting, performance figures of merit such as aperture efficiency, receiving sensitivity, sidelobe levels, and cross polarization isolation is a difficult optimization problem. An additional complication may be that the radiation patterns of all the feeds to be used in the system are not known at the time of the dish designs, as upgrades to the feeds may happen throughout the lifetime of large reflector systems. This paper presents a systematic parametric study to quantify the effects of the main causes of performance degradation in such a system, i.e. reflector diffraction and feed pattern variations. First, ideal Gaussian feed patterns are used in order to isolate the diffraction effects, and then the ideal patterns are varied to model the effect of using wideband feeds exhibiting radiation pattern variations over frequency. It is shown that the peak position in the shaping parameter space of the receiving sensitivity is not strongly influenced by diffraction - although the peak value is, as expected, reduced at lower frequencies. This allows similar feed patterns to be used in different frequency bands to still produce systems operating near the maximum sensitivity. When using non-ideal feed patterns it is shown that, for most performance metrics, diffraction effects dominate the feed variation performance degradation in smaller dishes. This allows possibly relaxed requirements on the radiation patterns of feeds used to illuminate electrically small reflector systems.

A spiral array radial line slot antenna (SA-RLSA) is designed in 22 GHz band. A SA-RLSA excited with a coaxial feeder suffers from aperture illumination fluctuation in amplitude and phase in the circumferential (φ-) direction while in the radial direction, reasonably uniform distribution is observed. Rotational symmetry of radiation patterns is degraded and especially the sidelobe levels are unbalanced. This fluctuation is associated with the generation of the higher order modes in the φ-direction and is the unique defect of SA-RLSA which uses oversized waveguide. In this paper, a novel feeding structure with two pairs of parasitic pins around a coaxial feeder is proposed and designed so as to compensate the rotational asymmetry of aperture illumination. A measurement using the model antenna designed in 22 GHz band demonstrates the enhancement of the rotational symmetry; the circumferential fluctuation is reduced from 5.1 dB and 33 degrees to 1.8 dB and 12 degrees, while the fluctuation in the first sidelobe level suppressed from 10.7 dB to 1.2 dB.

A multimode horn with both a low cross-polarization component less than -30 dB and good VSWR characteristics has been realized at frequency bands 8.6-9.8 GHz and 10.75-11.15 GHz. The improved performance of the proposed horn is verified by comparing with the previous dual-band double-flared horn. The design method for such a horn is based on the mode-matching approach combined with the optimization procedure. This paper proposes an objective function taking account of a spill-over loss and a rotational symmetry in the radiated field instead of an ideal radiation pattern. The effectiveness of our horn is verified by comparison between experimental results in the X band and predicted ones.

A post-wall waveguide-fed parallel plate slotted array is an attractive candidate for high efficiency and mass producible planar array antennas for millimeter wave applications. For the slot design of this large sized array, a periodic boundary wall model based on the assumption of infinite array size and a parallel waveguide is used. In fact, the aperture is large but still finite (10-40 wavelength) and the TEM-like wave is perturbed due to the narrow walls at the periphery of the aperture as well as the slot coupling; antenna efficiency is affected by the size and the aspect ratio of the aperture. All these observations imply the unique defects of oversized waveguide arrays. In this paper, the aperture efficiency of post-wall waveguide arrays is assessed as a function of size and aspect ratio of the aperture for the first time, both in theory and measurement. An effective field analysis for an electrically large oversized waveguide array, developed by the author, is utilized for determining the slot excitation coefficients and aperture illumination. It is predicted that the oversized waveguide array has a potential efficiency of 80-90% if the aperture is larger than 18 wavelength on a side and the gain is more than 30 dBi. A transversely wide aperture generally provides higher efficiency than a longitudinally long aperture, provided a perfectly uniform TEM wave would be launched from the feed waveguide.

A microstrip array antenna with 45-degree inclined linear polarization is proposed for automotive radars. The proposed antenna has the advantages of high aperture efficiency, low profile and ease of manufacture. The rectangular radiating elements inclined at 45 degrees to the straight microstrip line are directly connected to it at their corners in the proposed array antenna. The radiating element has a feature that radiation conductance for co-polarization is controlled widely enough to set desired amplitude distribution keeping excited mode for cross-polarization negligibly small. The feed line loss of the linear array antenna having 15 wavelengths is estimated 0.9 dB in the design taking the loss of the microstrip line into account. The performance of two types of developed antennas, for electrical and mechanical scanning radars, is presented. The fan beam subarray antenna for electrical scanning radars has an aperture efficiency of 53% with gain of 22.5 dBi at 76.5 GHz. For mechanical scanning radars, the two-stage series feeding circuit is also proposed for lower feed line loss and setting desired amplitude distribution. The pencil beam array antenna has an aperture efficiency of 39% with gain of 32.2 dBi at 76.5 GHz.

Monopulse technique is widely used for tracking radars. For tracking at a low elevation angle, a narrow beam is required in the elevation plane to reduce multipath signals such as gound reflections. In this case, an elliptical aperture is desired. We have developed an antenna with a high tracking accuracy and a high aperture efficiency which is composed of a monopulse feed and an elliptical aperture. In this paper we discuss a design of the feed through lens array with an elliptical aperture and a new monopulse feed. Evaluation test results of a production model proved validity of our design and showed good performance.