Struts scattering effects on high performance spacecraft antenna

In the typical Earth facing panel several high performance antennas are allocated in very close condition, so that it is necessary to use advanced electromagnetic models to calculate the impact of the complex mechanical supporting structure on the radiated fields. This work has been addressed to evaluate the undesired effects caused by the supporting struts of a compensated dual reflector Gregorian antenna. With the aim to establish, with a good accuracy level, the scattering impact on the antenna performances, in particular on the most critical one that is the co-polar isolation, the TICRA^® and FEKO^® commercial software results comparison have been considered, applying an approach based on Method of Moment (MoM) and Physical Optic/Physical Theory of Diffraction (PO/PTD) electromagnetic field evaluation.