CONSTRUCTION TECHNIQUE AND PERFORMANCE OF A 2 GHZ RECTANGULAR CORRUGATED HORN

A large rectangular horn antenna with a center frequency of 2.0 GHz, corrugated on the E-plane walls, made out of aluminum sheet, has been designed, constructed, and tested. A new technique has been developed to solder thin aluminum strips onto the back plane to form the corrugations. The radiation beam pattern shows half-power beamwidths of 12-degrees and 14-degrees in the H- and E-planes, respectively, and sidelobe response below -40 dB at angles greater than 50-degrees from the horn axis. The measured return loss is greater than 20 dB (VSWR < 1.22) between 1.7 and 2.3 GH insertion loss is less than 0.15 dB.