Hybrid analysis of reflector antennas including higher order interactions and blockage effects

The analysis of a reflector antenna system consisting of a feeder, a sub-reflector, and a main-reflector in microwave frequency bands, where the electrical dimensions of the antenna become prohibitively large for the use of a rigorous numerical method, has been performed by high-frequency asymptotic techniques (HFATs). As a result, the radiation patterns and input impedances of the antenna system were calculated based on an approximation: the radiation characteristics of the feed, sub-reflector and main-reflector are independent from each other. In this study, as an effort to alleviate the inaccuracy due to the exclusion of higher order mutual interactions existing among those subsystems, three different hybrid methods [finite-element method/method of moment (FEM/MOM) + physical optics (PO), FEM/MOM + geometrical theory of diffraction (GTD), and FEM/MOM + PO + physical theory of diffraction (PTD)] are introduced in the context of an iterative algorithm. The interactions between the feed and sub-reflector are accounted by a hybrid method which combines the FEM with the MOM; FEM/MOM. Whereas, the interactions between the objects in the FEM/MOM domain and the main-reflector are taken into account through the iteration: the fields and currents in the FEM/MOM domain are updated using the fields and currents obtained from the HFAT domain and vise-versa. These three methods are applied to two-dimensional reflector configurations, and corresponding results are compared in terms of accuracy and efficiency. The accuracy of the hybrid methods, especially those of FEM/MOM + GTD and FEM/MOM + PO + PTD, is found to be comparable to that of a rigorous numerical method. Furthermore, their computational costs are almost independent to the size of the main-reflector and to the distance from the feed point to the main-reflector.