Recommendations on Modeling Wire Grid Horn Structures for Sparse Antenna Generation

Based on method of moments, various wire grid antennas can be designed, which significantly reduce the antenna mass compared to solid metal structures. To meet the increasing demands for reducing the mass and size of antennas, the Optimal Current Grid Approximation approach was recently proposed. It can be applied to wire grid antenna structures to create their sparse versiones. Previous recommendations for the design of wire grid antenna structures are not adequate and suitable for the design of wire grid antenna structures that can be used to generate sparse antennas. In this paper, new recommendations for modeling the original wire-grid horn antenna are proposed and described in detail. The suitability and unsuitability of the previous recommendations are analyzed and the need for the new recommendations is justified. The effectiveness of the developed design guide was verified on the example of various horn antennas operating at UHF, X and K/Ka bands. The antenna characteristics of the wire grid structures designed using the new recommendations were compared with those calculated in different systems using other numerical methods, as well as with experimental results. The results of this paper enable antenna designers to quickly and accurately generate original horn wire grid structures with acceptable characteristics for sparse antenna applications.