A new dual-reflector feed system for the Nancay radio telescope

A new compact dual-reflector Gregorian feed system has been designed to improve the overall performance of the Nancay radio telescope. To operate continuously within the 1.0-3.5-GHz band, two wideband compact corrugated horns are used. The new feed system improves the sensitivity of the telescope by a factor between 2 and 3. To verify the theoretical design, a 1/20th-scale model was constructed and tested. The measured results were in excellent agreement with the predicted values.