Lens-Corrected Axis-Symmetrical Shaped Horn Antenna in Metallized Foam With Improved Bandwidth

A lens-corrected smooth-walled axis-symmetrical dielectric-loaded horn antenna is designed and characterized in Ka-band using the bodies of revolution finite-difference time domain (BoR-FDTD) technique and genetic algorithm. The joint optimization of the horn and dielectric loading profiles enables us to develop a horn with a very good gain performance achieved in a frequency range of about 18%. Compared to earlier results, the bandwidth improvement exceeds a factor two. A lightweight prototype is fabricated in metallized foam. A very good agreement between the numerical and measured data is obtained.