A High-Power Microwave Zoom Antenna With Metal-Plate Lenses

Metal-plate lens antennas were designed and constructed for a high-power microwave zoom antenna concept comprising a pyramidal horn feed antenna and two metal-plate lenses. Good agreement was found between experiment and simulation. This antenna provides true zoom capability with continuously variable collimated beam output, approximately 10% bandwidth, and very high power-handling capability. It can be designed to operate at any frequency in the range of about 100 MHz to 10 GHz. It was found that nano-modified carbon fiber composites could be used instead of metal plates in these lenses; these composites would reduce the weight of the lens significantly and would help to mitigate possible spurious TM modes induced in the lens when it is in the near-field of the feed horn antenna.