The radiation characteristics of honeycomb antennas

The honeycomb is usually excited by a balanced feed system, which requires a balun circuit. It often costs us to fabricate the balun circuit for microwave frequencies. We propose an easier excitation technique using an unbalanced feed system instead of a balanced feed system. When the side length of the honeycomb cell is nearly one-half of the wavelength and one-quarter of the wavelength, the honeycomb forms a radiation beam in the direction normal to the antenna plane. This paper presents the radiation characteristics for these configurations. The effects of the interior angle of the radiation cell on the gain are revealed. The frequency response of the gain is also presented.