Flat printed zone plate antennas for DBS reception

A systematic investigation on flat printed phase correcting zone plate reflector antennas is presented. A multilayered structure is proposed and a circular quarter-wave zone plate reflector with 54.8% efficiency is reported. When the zone plate reflector is offset, the circular zones become elliptical ones with their centers moved away successively from where the feed is directed. Experimental results on an offset half-wave zone plate reflector are given. Unfortunately, the antenna sidelobe level is much worse than that of the CCIR standard, which limits the zone plate reflectors as reception-only antennas. However, more recent experiments have shown that the sidelobes of the quarter-wave zone plate reflectors can be significantly improved by introducing better phase compensation and various approaches are being investigated