An Improved Design for a 1-18 GHz Double-Ridged Guide Horn Antenna

It is a well known fact that the traditional 1-18 GHz double ridge guide horn (DRGH) antenna suffers from pattern deterioration above 12 GHz. At these frequencies, instead of maintaining a single main lobe radiation pattern, the pattern splits up into four lobes. It was shown in the literature that higher order modes are causing the pattern breakup. A benchmark study is performed to establish the performance of typical current and historic 1-18 GHz DRGH antennas. The performance of the antennas are evaluated in terms of gain, VSWR and radiation patterns. An improved 1-18 GHz DRGH antenna is presented. The new design has better gain and VSWR performance without any pattern deterioration. It also consists of significantly fewer parts, reducing the possibility of performance deterioration due to gaps between parts. Two prototypes of the new design were manufactured and tested with excellent agreement between measured and simulated results. The aperture dimensions of the new design are identical to that of the traditional DRGH, making it the only 1-18 GHz DRGH without pattern breakup whose aperture dimensions comply with the requirements specified in MIL-STD-461F -24.2 by 13.6 cm.