Local Area Radiation Sidelobe Suppression of Reflector Antennas by Embedding Periodic Metallic Elements Along the Edge Boundary

This communication presents a simple and useful technique to suppress the radiation sidelobe levels (SLLs) of reflector antennas by embedding reflecting elements around the edge boundary. Due to the fact that sidelobes mainly arise from the edge diffractions, the reflecting elements can alter the phase distribution of induced currents along the edge boundary, and therefore reduce the sidelobes through the destructive cancellation of fields radiated from these elements. The desired phases are found through the implementation of pattern synthesis technique such as genetic algorithm to optimize the SLLs. This technique of edge current phase alternation may be employed, in conjunction with using a tapered feed radiation to illuminate the reflector, to control both amplitudes and phases of edge currents. Thus, the edge diffraction mechanism may be better controlled to optimize SLLs. In this communication, both resonant and nonresonant types of metallic elements are implemented and compared to illustrate their characteristics of radiations in SLL suppression. This technique is particularly useful to suppress the SLLs within a local angular region. Numerical results based on the method of moment analysis are presented to validate the feasibility.