Alternative multiple contoured beam reflector antenna technologies requiring less complex feed networks

Recently, shaped reflectors with single feeds have become popular for applications with a single contoured beam. Contoured-beam antennas have in the past mainly been array-fed offset reflectors. They may provide multiple contoured beams. This paper considers two reflector antenna realizations of multiple contoured beams with fewer feed elements. Fewer feeds will require less complex beam forming networks and ease the implementation of reconfigurability. Each concept is discussed by an example. The first example uses a shaped reflector with five large feeds to form a reconfigurable Hemi beam. The second example uses a dual-gridded reflector antenna with arrays of unequally sized waveguide feeds to form three frequency reuse beams in each polarization