Large deployable antennas benchmark for contoured beam mission in C band

We report an RF benchmark study of large deployable antennas for a contoured beam mission in C band. With conventional solid shaped reflector antennas being limited to diameters of 3 m, we investigate solid shaped reflector antennas with aperture diameters of 3 m and 6 m as well as 6 m mesh reflector and reflectarray antennas. We consider a European coverage with directivity and XPD goals, and a realistic corrugated horn feed in a single-offset reflector configuration for the design of solid, mesh and reflectarray antennas. Our study shows that several 6 m mesh and reflectarray antennas perform better than the 3 m solid shaped antenna, which, upon further technological maturation, may pave the way for one or more of these novel antenna concepts in future contoured beam applications, when large (>3 m) apertures are required.