Design and experimental verification of a dual beam shaped reflector antenna

The booming DBS business climate creates a strong demand for contoured beam antennas. Prior designs need a large complex feed array with an offset paraboloidal reflector. The shaped reflector concept requires only a single feed to achieve the same contoured beam. Consequently, due to its simplicity, shaped reflector contoured beam antennas are the most "wanted" antennas in the aerospace industry today. Due to limited available space on a satellite, it is desirable (often required) to generate multiple beams from one reflector. The multiple beam shaped reflector antennas have been studied in the past. However, the issue of the interbeam isolation was not addressed. The objective of this study is to investigate the feasibility of implementing realistic multiple beam shaped reflector antennas on a spacecraft. The coverage which we selected in this study is a typical INTELSAT hemi-coverages.