Design, Implementation, Simulation of a Pyramidal Horn Antenna Excited with Various Top-Hat Loaded Monopoles

This paper presents the design and simulation of a wideband, medium gain, light weight, wide bandwidth pyramidal horn antenna feed for microwave applications. The horn was designed using approximation method to calculate the gain in mat lab and simulated using CST microwave studio. The proposed antenna operates within 1-2 GHz (L-band). The horn is supported by a rectangular wave guide. It is linearly polarized and shows wide bandwidth with a gain of 15.3dB. The horn is excited with the monopole which is loaded with various top hat loading such as rectangular disc, circular disc, annular disc, L-type, T-type, Cone shape, U-shaped plates etc. and checked their performances for return loss as well as bandwidth. The circular disc and annular ring gives the low return loss and wide bandwidth as well as low VSWR. The annular ring gave good VSWR and return loss compared to the circular disc. The far field radiation pattern is obtained as well as Efield & H-field analysis for L-band pyramidal horn has been observed, simulated and optimized using CST Microwave Studio. The simulation results show that the pyramidal horn structure exhibits low VSWR as well as good radiation pattern over L-band.