Description
A novel multiple beam antenna architecture was developed, that is based on a quasi-optical lens beamformer. It consists in the association of a doubly curved reflector with a stack of fully metallic parallel plate waveguide beamformers terminated with a flare. The resulting architecture has the capability to reduce the phase aberration over a large angular sector, and thus to improve the characteristics of the multiple beams.
A novel quasi-optical beamformer based on a continuous delay lens was designed, manufactured and tested. The wide band and wide scanning capability is demonstrated at Ku band, as well as low return loss at all input ports and low mutual coupling. The agreement between measurements and simulations is outstanding, for both the S parameters and the radiation patterns. The beamformer was also designed to operate in the Ka Rx/Tx band. It is of high interest for the on-board antennas for LEO and MEO constellation systems.
