Design of Broadband Constant-Beamwidth Conical Corrugated-Horn Antennas [Antenna Designer´s Notebook]

In this paper, a new design procedure is proposed for the design of wideband constant-beamwidth conical corrugated-horn antennas, with minimum design and construction complexity. The inputs to the procedure are the operating frequency band, the required minimum beamwidth in the entire frequency band, and the frequency in which the maximum gain is desired to occur. Based on these values, the procedure gives a relatively good design with a relative bandwidth of up to 2.5:1. Based on the proposed procedure, a corrugated-horn antenna with a constant beamwidth over the frequencies of 8 to 18 GHz was designed and simulated using commercial software. The designed antenna was also constructed, and its electromagnetic performance was measured. The measured results of the constructed prototype antenna confirmed the simulation results and satisfied the design requirements, validating the proposed design procedure.