Research staff: Salvador Mercader Pellicer , George Goussetis, Gabriela Medero
External collaborators: Thales Alenia Space
Funding body: Heriot-Watt University
Duration: 2014-17
Parabolic reflector antennas are widely used in satellite communications, tracking radars, as well as other similar applications. To avoid blockage from the feed and struts, it is common to use them in offset configuration. However, the cross-polarisation (xpol) levels can be not negligible for this configuration. In order to control the magnitude and phase of co- and cross-polarisation components to reduce the xpol levels or to perform polarisation conversion, it is common to use metasurfaces on top on or instead of the reflector or subreflector.
For this project, in-house tools (Fig.1 and 2) have been developed to obtain the far-field from reflector antennas, using geometrical optics (GO) and physical optics (PO). For the analysis of the metasurfaces, in-house MoM tools and CST are used. With these tools, novel antenna designs in collaboration with Thales Alenia Space in France and ESA are been developed, such as cross-polarisation suppressors, polarisers or multi-beam antennas.
Figure 1:ray tracing
Figure 2: far-field from offset protector
List of papers: J.L. Gómez-Tornero, S. Mercader-Pellicer, A.J. Martínez-Ross, G. Goussetis, “Simple Broadband Quasi-Optical Spatial Multiplexer in Substrate Integrated Technology”, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Techn., vol. 63, no. 5, pp. 1609-1620, May 2015 (http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7080946/)
