Smooth aperture distribution synthesis for shaped beam reflector antennas

A method of synthesising smooth aperture amplitude and phase distributions from a prescribed far-field radiation pattern is proposed. A geometric optics (GO) solution of the problem, which gives a starting point for the final physical optics (PO) optimisation, is obtained using the Monge-Ampere approach of Westcott (1983). During PO optimisation a derivative condition is invoked to control the smoothness of the aperture distributions.