A comparison of reflector antenna designs for wide‐angle scanning

Conventional reflector antennas are typically designed for up to ±20 beamwidths scan. In this paper, we try to stretch this scan range to some ± 300 beamwidths by varying various parameters of single- and dualreflector antennas. It is found that a symmetrical parabolic reflector with f/D = 2 and a single circular waveguide feed has the minimum scan loss (only 0.6 dB at θ0 = 8°, or a 114 beamwidth scan). Reduction of antenna size by means of focal length folding (Cassegrain) of cluster feed implementation is discussed.