Compensation of spherical reflector aberrations by planar array feeds

The feasibility of correcting phase aberrations of spherical reflector antennas with planar array feeds has been investigated. This type of feed seems to be particularly attractive for applications requiring several closely spaced beams. A synthesis procedure for the array excitation has been developed which minimizes the mean-square error with respect to a prescribed reflector illumination. This method was applied to the analysis of a spherical reflector antenna with a
642\lambda
diameter and an effective
F
number of 0.9.