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KEYWORDS: Primary feed, Cassegrain Dual Reflector, subreflector dimensions, conical corrugated feed horn,
ICARA
__________________________________________________________________________________________
INTRODUCTION has found application in telecommunications. It was
The proposal for converting a redundant 32- meter designed to operate as the Intelsat Standard A
Cassegrain Dual Reflector Antenna at Nkuntunse, specification of the time, with a single conical
Ghana (see fig. 1) from a telecommunication satellite corrugated feed providing transmission frequency of
to a fully operational radio telescope instrument was 5.9 6.4 GHz and reception at 3.7 4.2 GHZ
initiated in 2011, by the Ministry of Environment,
Science and Technology, Ghana, and the SKA-
Africa Group in South Africa. The antenna facility
was handed to Ghana Atomic Energy Commission to
make use of it as a radio telescope and further given
to the Ghana Space Science and Technology Institute
(G.S.S.T.I). The G.S.S.T.I in collaboration with the
SKA-Africa group was therefore tasked to solve the
associated technical and logistic problems and apply
the existing facility at Nkuntunse for radio astronomy
among others. Currently, the conversion process is
underway and this paper seeks to review and analyze
the existing antenna feed system in order to optimize
its performance for a successful facility of the global
and Africa Very Long Baseline Interferometry
(VLBI) Network (AVN). For many years, the 32-m
dish dual-reflector system at Nkuntunse Satellite site Figure 1: Overview of the 32-m NEC Antenna
230
Research Journal in Engineering and Applied Sciences (ISSN: 2276-8467) 2(4):230-235
Analysis Of 32-M Dual Reflector Cassegrain Antenna Feed System At Nkuntunse, Ghana
231
Research Journal in Engineering and Applied Sciences (ISSN: 2276-8467) 2(4):230-235
Analysis Of 32-M Dual Reflector Cassegrain Antenna Feed System At Nkuntunse, Ghana
where d and are the subreflector diameter and
1
d sub (9)
sub ta n 2 f
main reflector diameter respectively, is the edge hyp
taper given as a ratio We agreed on a feedhorn and angle , the effective
ta p e r in d B
E 10
10
(2) for the feed can be expressed as;
1 (10)
E ffec tiv e fee d f
d
II. Approximate Subreflector Efficiency
Kildal, finally calculated the approximate efficiency
4 ta n
2
for the combination of blockage and IV. Feedhorn
diffraction losses as: We can now calculate the hyperbola dimensions for
2 (3) 2
the sub reflector required to reform the feed horn
d d sub pattern to correctly illuminate the dish, as well as the
1 C b 1 1 s u b
.
D p D p desired focal length of hyperbola and the distance
between the two focus of the hyperbola in the
Where In E (4) following sections. The feedhorn illuminates the
C b
1 E subreflector, which subtends the angle , and this
III. Feed Blockage angle for a given is expressed by;
With a Cassegrain system, we may be able to use an
excellent feedhorn, so that the feedhorn improvement 1
is better than the Cassegrain efficiency loss. If we
2. tan 1 (11)
f
4.
can also minimize feed line loss by making the feed D
location more convenient, so much the better would it To adjust this for edge taper we chose above, we use
be. The minimum blockage condition offers smaller Kellehers universal horn equation;
size of the subreflector and reduced amount of
sidelobe. If the overall diameter of the feed is f D
'
.
edge taper in dB
(12)
then condition for minimum blockage [A. W. Love, 10
ed. 1978.]
Equation (12) is used to correct the illumination angle
F d (5) for our desired subreflector edge taper [P. Wade,
2 f D f 2004].
The diameter for minimum blockage condition is
given by; V. Hyperbola Focal Length
The feed is positioned so that the angle subtended by
2 (6)
D b m in k F the subreflector is , and we placed the feed at one
It shows that the shadows created by feed aperture focus of the hyperbola while the dish prime focus at
and the hyperboloid are nearly equal and they the other; see figure 1. Therefore, the focal length of
contribute to the aperture blockage. If the distance of the hyperbola between the foci is
the subreflector from feed is reduced, the blocking
offered by feed would be greater. If the phase centre
f hyp
0.5d sub cot cot '
(13)
of the feed is known then it should be coincided with Vi. Subreflector Geometry
the real focal point and the minimum blockage The subreflector must reshape the illumination from
condition becomes; the effective feed f /d to for the dish, a
F d (7) magnification factor M expressed as:
2 f D pc Df (14)
E ffe c tiv e fe e d f
The feedhorn blockage, shown as angle in Figure 2 M d
is of great concern. The Rays near the center of the f p
232
Research Journal in Engineering and Applied Sciences (ISSN: 2276-8467) 2(4):230-235
Analysis Of 32-M Dual Reflector Cassegrain Antenna Feed System At Nkuntunse, Ghana
233
Research Journal in Engineering and Applied Sciences (ISSN: 2276-8467) 2(4):230-235
Analysis Of 32-M Dual Reflector Cassegrain Antenna Feed System At Nkuntunse, Ghana
50 30
20
10
Figure 3 (c) Plot Currents showing Aperture Feed
Illumination 0
dBi
0
-10
-20
-30
0
-50 -0.5
1 -0.5 -40
0.5 -10 0
0
0 0.5 0.5
-0.5 -20 u
v
-1
2 1 0 -1 -2
-30 Figure 3 (g): Far Field u-v plot
1 -0.5 0
0.5
0 -1
-0.5 -10
-1.5
-1
2 1 0 -1 -2 -2
-20
dBi
-30
-40
-60
-10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8 10
Theta (deg)
60 Copolar (Mag)
50
40
30
dBi
20
10
-10
-10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8 10
Theta (deg)
Figure 3 (f): Feed Aperture Axis Figure 3 (i) 2 D Normalised Radiation Pattren
234
Research Journal in Engineering and Applied Sciences (ISSN: 2276-8467) 2(4):230-235
Analysis Of 32-M Dual Reflector Cassegrain Antenna Feed System At Nkuntunse, Ghana
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to express their profound
thanks to the Radio Astronomy and Control and
Monitoring working groups of the Ghana Space
Science and Technology Institute and their
counterparts from SKA-SA for their valuable support
and help in creating this article.
REFERENCES
Figure 3 (j) Co- Polarization Radiation Pattern (3D) A. D. Olver, August, 1961: A. D. Olver, August,
1961. Design of Throat Section of Conical
CONCLUSION Corrugated Horns TDA, Progress Report Pp 42-65
We present optimization analysis of the 32-m dual A. W. Love, ed. 1978.: Allan W. Love, ed. 1978.
reflector Cassegrain single conical corrugated feed Reflector Antennas New York, IEEE Press.
system antenna providing reception frequency of 4.0
GHz in this paper. As shown in the Cassegrain A. W. Love, ed. 1978.: Allan W. Love, ed. 1976.
Antenna Design Calculator table (see table 1), this Electromagnetic Horn Antennas, New York, IEEE
frequency leads to a desire illumination taper of Press.
11.74 dB and a subreflector efficiency of 85.7 %. The
analysis gave the optimum values of the subreflector C. Del Rio et. Al., 1995: Spanish Patent P.9501922,
geometric dimension, which implies that the vertex of Horn Antenna Mode Converter from
the conical transmission feed line is located where it Waveguide Modes to Gaussian Structures,
should so that the wave incident on the subreflector
are spherical with it origin in the proper place (see C. Del Rio et. Al., 1996: Spanish Patent P.9601636,
fig. 3 (h-i)). Mode Converter: From the TE11 Monomode
Circular Waveguide Mode to the HE11 Corrugated
From the study (see table 1), it was found that both Circular Waveguide Mode,
the subreflector and main reflector are shaped and the
f/D ratio of 0.43 are satisfactory to optimally IMEC 2009: M. M. Soe, Z. M. Aung, Z. M. Naing
illuminate the feed aperture of the antenna. The f/D and K. Theingi Oo (2009) Performance Analysis
ratio for maximum efficiency is the dish best and Design Consideration of Cassegrain for Satellite
illuminated by the feed. We assumed the best f/D for Communication International Multi Conference of
a feed is also where it provides illumination with Engineers and Computer Scientists 2009 Vol. I
about 11.74 dB edge taper, the feed taper was found
to be 11.79 dB, being the sum of the subreflector ICARA v. 1.2, 2007: ICARA, Induced Current
edge taper plus space attenuation and the feed Analysis of Reflector Antennas-software
directivity of 38.91 dB. The study further revealed http://www.com.uvigo.es/ant
that the 32-m Cassegrains subreflector is large
enough to eliminate the feedhorn blockage, J. Trivedi and S. Shah (2013) Design of Dual
increasing the focal distance without changing the Reflector Cassegrain Feed System Antenna,
subtended half-angle to illuminate for a given f/D International Journal of Engineering Trends and
ratio. The ICARA software used apparently Technology, Vol. 4 Issue 3, 2013, Pp 358
suggested the best edge taper of 11.74 dB which
closely approximates the primary feeds actual KIL 1983: P-S. Kildal "The Effects of Subreflector
radiation pattern. The radiation pattern shows the Diffraction on the Aperture Efficiency of a
gain depends on the size of the antenna and that Conventional Cassegrain Antenna-An Analytical
reduces the cross-polarization. Mathematical analysis Approach" IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol.
of parameters was simple and based on explicit AP31, N0.6, pp. 903-909, Nov.1983
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Design Calculator. The calculator involves a number P. Wade, 2004. Multiple Reflector Dish Antennas
of approximations, and our limitation was that the
error estimation increased as we stretched the W. V. T. Rusch, The Current State of the Reflector
approximations. The study is limited within these Antenna Art, IEEE Transactions on Antennas and
locations due to the computational burden involved Propagation, vol. 32, pp. 313-329, April 1984
with the analysis (a single-frequency simulation
requires about some few minutes in a 2.1 GHz i3
dual-core processor machine) and especially the
235