Design and development of an integrated twin feed horn for a DBS reflector antenna

A 12.2 to 12.7 GHz integrated twin feed horn for a 60-cm reflector antenna structure has been designed and fabricated. The two horns utilized are corrugated and laterally defocused to produce dual beams. However, tight separation between the two horn centers necessitated corrugation overlapping to achieve a beam spacing of 4.5/spl deg/. Accurate center-to-center horn spacing calculation has been carried out using simulation CAD tools that take diffraction effects into account. In this paper, we provide a complete performance evaluation of the design and development of this twin feed horn structure when utilized with an offset-fed 60-cm reflector antenna.