Experimental validation of a compact 3D-printed subreflector subsystem for Cassegrain antenna in X-band

  1. Rebollo, Alejandro
  2. Fernández Vaquero, Alvaro 1
  3. Arrebola Baena, Manuel 1
  4. Rodríguez Pino, Marcos 1
  1. 1 Universidad de Oviedo
    info

    Universidad de Oviedo

    Oviedo, España

    ROR https://ror.org/006gksa02

Proceedings:
15th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP)

Year of publication: 2021

Congress: European Conference on Antennas and Propagation, EuCAP (15th. Virtual)

Type: Conference paper

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Abstract

In this work, a dual-reflector antenna based on a Cassegrain optics with a compact self-supported subreflector is presented to operate at X-band. The feeding subsystem is composed of a subreflector surface, the primary feed and a supporting structure in a single dielectric piece, providing a smart solution. The antenna is fed by a metallic rectangular waveguide with a H-plane transition to a Dielectric Rectangular Waveguide (DRW) finished on a hyperboloid. The designing process presented is based on optical geometrics and it is validated through the manufacture of the Cassegrain antenna. The prototype is fabricated using a 3-D printed technique and the subreflector and main parabolic reflector are metalized by a coating technique. The antenna is simulated and measured obtaining a high agreement on both. The prototype shows good performances in the whole band, validating both the designing technique and the proposed subreflector.

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Funding information

This work was supported in part by the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades under Project TEC2017-86619-R (ARTEINE), the European Space Agency under Contract ESTEC/AO/1-7064/12/NL/MH, and by Gobierno del Principado de Asturias/FEDER under Project GRUPIN-IDI/2018/0001991.

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