Advanced modelling and measurements of wideband horn antennas

Dual-ridge horn antennas are commonly used as wideband gain standards for antenna measurements. For this application, an accurate characterization of the antenna performance parameters such as directivity, boresight gain, and return loss vs. frequency is critical. The performance of the Satimo dual-ridge horn antennas has been measured in several antenna test facilities, such as the Satimo Stargate64 and StarLab spherical near-field ranges, as well as in far-field test ranges at GTRI and NIST. This paper presents a correlation of these results to numerically calculated antenna performance, showing an excellent agreement between simulations and measurements.