Abstract
In traditional antenna design, metal components are not placed in the central part of the antenna as they change the characteristics of near field radiation. However, we show that placing a metal ring in the centre of the strip lines, which connect the ends of folded high-frequency dipoles, does not damage the performance of the feed. Instead it significantly improves the voltage standing wave ratio of the feed whilst other performance indicators are not compromised. Thus, our findings show an excellent way of improving the wide band feed. Based on this foundation, a new circularly polarised feed for operation between 0.4 to 2 GHz is introduced for the Chinese Spectral Radioheliograph in this paper. The issue of a feed impedance matching network is investigated. By optimising the impedance matching, the performance of the feed is enhanced with respect to the previous realisations of the Eleven feed. The simulation and experimental results show that the gain of the feed is about 10 dBi, and the VSWR is less than 2:1. In addition, the feed has a low axial ratio, fixed phase centre location, and constant beam width in the range of 0.4 to 2 GHz.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e061 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia |
| Volume | 33 |
| Early online date | 13 Dec 2016 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2016 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Astronomical instrumentation
- Methods and techniques
- Methods: analytical