Improved radiation pattern performance of Gaussian profiled horn antennas

A new horn antenna profile is presented. This new profile based on Gaussian techniques offers the best solution when the requirements related to the radiation pattern are very stringent. Short-horn antennas with high-conversion efficiency to a fundamental Gaussian beam, and therefore, very low sidelobe and cross-pol levels in a wide-frequency band, could be obtained by using the design technique presented here. Once the theoretical principles of the Gaussian profiled horn antennas (GPHA) are presented, some other possibilities involving Gaussian profiles are studied and compared with their conventional counterparts. Finally, as an example of the design technique proposed, a particular design of a GPHA for HISPASAT 1C and now also valid for the new HISPASAT 1D satellite is presented, showing the excellent agreement between the theoretical and experimental results.