Compact Shortened V-Band Conical Dielectric Core Horns Corrected by Lenses

Resumen

A procedure of designing ultra-short conical horns corrected by lenses, is boarded at this work. The method takes advantages of the axisymmetric character of the conical horns to project the problem to a bidimensional mesh, reducing the computational time and making easy the optimization of the device. This approach is not used for most popular commercial codes which employ a 3D analysis of the whole antenna. Horn antennas exhibit some remarkable radiation characteristics as they are high directivity, low crosspolar level and symmetric patterns with low return losses on a reasonable bandwidth. The price to pay is handle devices very long and weighed, so it is demanding to find lines of design to shorten and make compact horns to be incorporated to the current communication systems. In this work, we show the advantages to use a double convex lens together with a dielectric core, added to the horn, to achieve a compact and shortened horn maintaining a good performance. Conical horns, of a size as small as one wavelength, can be achieved. To reach such shortening, a double convex lens and a dielectric core must be added to the antenna. The parameters of the final prototype, at 60 GHz, are the following: Length: ≈λ, Directivity = 20 dBi, Cross polar Peak = −19.1 dB, Beam width on copular plane = 18.3°, Side Lobe Levels lower than −20 dB (both H and E plane), Return losses = −30.7 dB, and presenting an smooth frequency behavior on a wide bandwidth.