Fast-Shaping of Reflector Antenna Illuminated by Quasi-Actual Feed

Abstract

A time-saving method to reshape the surface of reflector antenna fed by a quasi-actual feed(QAF) based on the Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline Surface (NURBS) technique, ray tracing technology (RT), physical optical method (PO), and Gauss-Legendre integral (GLI), is proposed. The optimized surface of the reflector can be smooth and time-saving by NURBS algorithm to support its better agreement with its future manufactured counterpart and by RT-PO-GLI method, where the antenna is fed by a QAF derived from the far-field data of an antenna model simulated from the commercial software MWS Studio CST, not a pure imaginary feed like in the available literature. An objective function is constructed with the weights of main-lobe level, side-lobe level, and beam width of the considered antenna to regulate the method to optimize electric far-field radiation patterns to specific purpose. The results show that the method has a faster calculating speed and can surely be expected to design a reshaped reflector antenna effectively and fast.