Design & measurements techniques for circularly polarized, dual fed, high gain, lightweight, wideband conical horn antenna with suppressed side lobes & high performance radome for space applications

This paper discusses the design & measurement techniques of a circularly polarized, high gain, light weight, wide band conical horn antenna with suppressed side lobes and high performance radome for space applications. Innovative orthogonal Dual Fed technique along with 90 degrees phase shifter/ power coupler has been used to achieve wide circular polarization bandwidth of greater than 1.5 GHz for axial ratio <; 3 dB highly recommended for space applications thus making polarization independent of matching issues. Antenna has a wide bandwidth characteristic showing VSWR <; 2 for bandwidth range of 3.5 GHz. Space Heritage for horn antennas & its advantages over other antennas have also been discussed. High performance radome material with its effects on antenna gain & axial ratio characteristics has also been discussed. Absolute gain measurement techniques have been employed for the measurement of antenna gain. Simulation & Optimization for horn antenna has been done on Ansoft HFSS vll.