UWB gain enhancement of horn antennas using miniaturized frequency selective surface

Abstract

In this work, enhancement of the radiation performances of horn antennas are worked out within their operation bandwidth by placing the miniaturized Frequency Selective Surface (FSS)s perpendicularly into the inner part of their flares. Here each FSS consists of only a single miniaturized double-sided inverted Tshaped square unit cell designed on the low-cost FR4 with relative permittivity 4.4, loss tangent 0.0035 and thickness 1.58 mm in 3D CST environment so that it is able to focus the propagating electromagnetic waves to increase the directivity properties like a dielectric lens, while keeping the mismatching characteristics with less size and low manufacturing cost compared to its counter parts. Herein an exponentially tapered TEM horn with the operation bandwidth of 5-13 GHz is taken as an example horn antenna for measurements. From the measured results of the prototyped module, it can be observed that the proposed module keep mismatching characteristics of the horn antenna, meanwhile the gain and beam widths are enhanced to amplify the signal in the operation band without any increase in the total volume of the module or making the design bulky. Thus, it is expected that this methodology can be implemented to horn antennas effectively reducing volume and cost of communication systems