The Circular Eleven Antenna: A New Decade-Bandwidth Feed for Reflector Antennas With High Aperture Efficiency

Future ultra-wideband (UWB) radio telescopes require UWB feeds for reflector antennas, and many new UWB feed technologies have gained substantial progress to satisfy the tough specifications for future radio telescope projects, such as the square kilometer array (SKA). It has been noticed that, different from traditional narrow-band horn feeds, all UWB feeds are non-BOR (Body of Revolution) antennas. Therefore, BOR1 efficiency becomes an important characterization for the modern UWB feed technologies. We present a novel circular Eleven feed, constructed of “circularly” curved folded dipoles printed on flat circuit boards, in order to have high BOR1 efficiency at a low manufacture cost. The Genetic Algorithm (GA) optimization scheme has been applied to the design for achieving a low reflection coefficient. Simulated and measured results show that the circular Eleven feed has a reflection coefficient below -6 dB over 1.6-14 GHz and below -10 dB over 78% of the band, and an aperture efficiency higher than 60% over 1-10 GHz and 50% up to 14 GHz.