IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.

7, 2008

31

Accurate Design Method for Pyramidal Horns of Any Desired Gain and Aperture Phase Error
Krishnasamy T. Selvan, Senior Member, IEEE
AbstractAn exact solution is presented for the fourth-order polynomial representing the general horn design problem. When the available approximations are used for the gain reduction factors, this leads to closed-form expressions for the aperture, and hence the other, dimensions of the pyramidal horn of any desired gain and aperture phase error. Index TermsOptimum pyramidal horn design, pyramidal horn design.

I. INTRODUCTION YRAMIDAL horns, being one of the simplest and most reliable microwave antennas, nd wide application. An accurate design method for the optimum pyramidal horn, a popular gain standard, is presented in [1]. A numerical design method for pyramidal horns of any desired gain and aperture phase error is described in [2]. In this letter, an exact solution for the general pyramidal horn design is presented. II. THE HORN DESIGN PROBLEM With reference to the geometry of the pyramidal horn shown in Fig. 1 [3], the general horn design equation can be written as [1], [2] (4) (5) offer a root mean square (rms) error of 0.124%. Considering the acceptable accuracy of these expressions, and also taking into account the desirability of closed-form analytical solutions, these approximations are used in this letter. More accurate expressions in terms of and and involving Fresnel integrals are also presented in [5] for calculating the gain reduction factors, and can be used for better accuracy. III. DESIGN SOLUTION The quartic equation (1) has a laborious solution [1], [6]. The narrow aperture dimension of the general pyramidal horn, as obtained by solving (1), is given by (3) and are the - and where is the wavelength and -plane gain reduction factors, respectively. Approximate expressions for calculating and , obtained by using linear
Manuscript received October 27, 2007; revised November 27, 2007. The author is with the Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science, The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, Jalan Broga, Semenyih 43500, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia (e-mail: Krishnasamy.Selvan@nottingham.edu. my). Digital Object Identier 10.1109/LAWP.2007.914119 1536-1225/$25.00 2008 IEEE

Fig. 1. Geometry of pyramidal horn.

regression curve tting, are presented in [5]. These equations, given by

(1) where and are the phase-error parameters in the -plane, respectively, and is given by - and the

(2) with the gain of the horn given by [4]

(6) where

(7) (8)

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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 7, 2008

with

(9) (10) (11) Once is estimated, the other dimensions of the horn can be calculated as follows:

15.66 dB, which is in close agreement with the desired gain. (ii) A Ku-band horn is desired with the following specica, , and tions: , and . Use of the design equations above give the following dimensions: , , , and . The realized gain with these dimensions is calculated to be 24.68 dB, and is in good agreement with the goal gain. In the above, it may be noted that the Schelkunoffs horn gain [7]. formula has an uncertainty of V. CONCLUSION An exact solution for the design of pyramidal horns of arbitrary gain and aperture phase error was presented. Illustrative examples were considered for validating the design formulas. REFERENCES
[1] K. T. Selvan, Accurate design method for optimum gain pyramidal horns, Electron. Lett., vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 249250, Feb. 1999, [Corrections, Electron. Lett., vol. 35, no. 7, p. 607, Apr. 1999]. [2] J. F. Aurand, Pyramidal horns, part 2: A novel design method for horns of any desired gain and aperture phase error, in Proc. IEEE Antennas Propag. Symp., Jun. 1989, vol. 3, pp. 14391442. [3] K. T. Selvan, Derivation of a condition for the normal gain behaviour of pyramidal horns, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 48, no. 12, pp. 17821784, Nov. 2000. [4] K. T. Selvan, An approximate generalization of Schelkunoffs horn gain formulas, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 47, no. 6, pp. 10011004, Jun. 1999. [5] J. F. Aurand, Pyramidal horns, part 1: Simple expressions for directivity as a function of aperture phase error, in Proc. IEEE Antennas Propag. Symp., Jun. 1989, vol. 3, pp. 14351438. [6] M. Abramowitz and I. Stegun, Eds., Handbook of Mathematical Functions With Formulas, Graphs and Mathematical Tables, 9th ed. New York: Dover, 1972, pp. 1718. [7] K. T. Selvan, R. Sivaramakrishnan, K. R. Kini, and D. R. Poddar, Experimental verication of the generalized Schelkunoffs horn-gain formulas, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 50, no. 6, pp. 875877, Jun. 2002.

(12) (13) (14) The optimum design equations are obtained when one sets and in (6)(14). These equations would of course reduce to the design equations presented in [1]. IV. DESIGN EXAMPLES To validate the above design equations, we will consider two examples: (i) It is required to build an -band horn with the following , , specications: and , and . This is nonoptimum case. Use of the design equations , above give the following dimensions: , , and . When these dimensions are substituted into the horn gain equation [4, Eq. 1], the realized gain is calculated to be