Large Deployable Antennas Benchmark for Contoured Beam Mission in C Band

We report an RF benchmark study of large deployable antennas for a contoured beam mission in C band. With conventional solid shaped reflector antennas being limited to diameters of 3 m, we investigate solid shaped reflector antennas with aperture diameters of 3 m and 6 m as well as 6 m mesh reflector and reflectarray antennas. We consider a European coverage with directivity and XPD goals, and a realistic corrugated horn feed in a single-offset reflector configuration for the design of solid, mesh and reflectarray antennas. Our study shows that several 6 m mesh and reflectarray antennas perform better than the 3 m solid shaped antenna, which, upon further technological maturation, may pave the way for one or more of these novel antenna concepts in future contoured beam applications, when large (u003e3 m) apertures are required.