Experimental and Numerical Analysis to Determine the Equivalent Strip Width for Cylindrical Wire for Mesh Reflector Antennas

Reflector antennas are used to realize large deployable antennas in many satellite and ground antenna systems. The utilization of a knitted wire mesh as the reflecting surface provides reduced wind effects, unfurlability and deployable capability. In the past, the mesh surface problem has been solved by using wire-grid modeling, strip-aperture modeling and periodic method of moments. In 1982, Butler showed that the equivalent strip width of an isolated single conducting wire is twice its diameter. This result was based on the equivalency of the total currents induced on the conducting cylinder and the narrow strip. This strip-wire equivalence has been used in all the strip aperture and wire grid formulations. This equivalence has not been verified in practice for mesh reflector structures where one may also consider the interaction among adjacent wires. The motivation of this work is to calculate the equivalent factor (beta) (beta = w (width of the strip) / d (diameter of the wire)) thus determining the equivalent strip width for a cylindrical wire with measurement and numerical analysis for mesh reflectors by considering the interaction among adjacent wires