Cost-effective horn antennas; from E-plane sectionalized to octagonal shapes

In this paper, low-cost methods of improving horn antennas are studied based on the recently introduced E-plane sectionalized rectangular horn antennas. In the beginning, application of E-plane sectionalizing of the rectangular horn antennas on open-boundary E-plane sectoral horn antennas is reexamined and a simple method for obtaining high gain and low sidelobe levels (SLLs) is introduced. Subsequently, effects of removing the conductive sheets from the modified E-plane sectionalized horn antenna are studied and a simple horn antenna with octagonal aperture is obtained with slightly reduced efficiency. Finally, an ultra-low-cost method of improving simple rectangular horn antennas is introduced based on this study. The purpose is to compensate the destructive effects of high SLLs of reference antennas in the antenna measurements, since a common reference antenna type is the rectangular horn antenna, which has high SLLs on the E-plane. In particular, efficiency improvement and SLL reduction of rectangular horn antennas are achieved by adding only four triangular conductive sheets to construct octagonal horn antennas.