Development of a Reconfigurable Antenna System for Ku Band Applications

In order to better exploit the performance of a Ku band system, IDS developed an antenna system that can be easily reconfigured for specific needs. Starting from a standard horn design, a pattern reconfigurable antenna has been designed and developed. The result is a set of accessories that can be mounted on the horn itself in order to modify the pattern to the specific mission needs. As a result, pattern can vary from a wide symmetric beam to a narrow beam or cosec-squared like pattern, thus allowing data collection on single reference point as well as on a set of points at variable distance. The antenna has been designed resorting to numerical simulations and using COTS absorbing materials and removable dielectric lenses. Measurements show a very good agreement with simulations.