Aperture radiation analysis including plane finiteness and mutual coupling

Designing horn clusters for contoured beam antennas on board satellites (e.g. the ATLANTIS antenna) requires an accurate simulation of the copolar and cross-polar components of their field patterns. This simulation should include mutual couplings between horns and a suitable modeling of the horns´ surroundings. The field pattern obtained with conical horns that open in a finite metallic plate is presented and compared with measurements. The proposed model uses a numerical integration procedure to calculate the mutual coupling between the different horn modes and to compute the radiated patterns and GTD to include the finite plate. This procedure makes it possible to analyze any type of horn (with analytic modes) placed on a conducting plate which is either polygonal or circular. The results obtained using cylindrical horns provide a better prediction than does a simple model without GTD.<>