Experimental verification of the analysis of umbrella parabolic reflectors

Abstract

Gored umbrella parabolic reflectors with symmetric aperture illumination have been treated analytically in a recent paper. This communication extends the analysis to the case where the primary feed illumination is not symmetric, because real primary feeds usually have unequal <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">E</tex> - and <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">H</tex> -plane beamwidths. The gore loss and the shift in the defocusing curve obtained using the modified gain expression are in excellent agreement with values measured for a smooth parabolic reflector and a gore parabolic reflector of the same diameter.