Leaky wave enhanced feeds for multi-beam reflector systems

This paper discusses the use of dielectric superlayers to shape the radiation pattern of focal plane feeds of a multi-beam reflector system. The shaping of the pattern is obtained by exciting a pair (TE/TM) of leaky waves that radiate incrementally as they propagate between the ground plane and the super-layer. Using the super-layers, it is possible to reduce the spillover from the reflectors without increasing the dimension of each aperture. This effect is achieved with an inter-element distance between the feeds of 2.4 wavelengths, which can be considered typical for satellite based multi beam telecommunication links. Thanks to the adoption of a x4 reuse scheme, based on frequency and polarization orthogonal channels, the measured edge of coverage gain has improved, with respect to a standard technology case, by 2 dB over an operational bandwidth of 2%.