Overlapped feeds to increase the edge of coverage gain in multi-beam reflector antennas

A novel strategy has been presented to design multi-beam reflector antenna system based on the excitation of a couple of leaky waves by covering the focal plane array with a single thin dielectric layer and tuning the array design to maximize their positive effect. In the worst case scenario of neighboring co-frequency and co-polarized beams an increase of the Geoc of 1 dB over a 6% BW with respect to the standard free space designs could be obtained. In the scenario of a multi beam system for a telecommunication satellite with four channels an edge of coverage increase larger than 1.7 dB has been shown over a 3% BW.