Compact Dual Linear Polarized Antenna Feed for LEO Satellites Based on Quad Ridge Waveguide

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites are regaining interest in the wireless communications community as they will be heavily used in future wireless communication networks. LEO satellite transceivers require high-gain antennas with stable characteristics within the operating bandwidth. Horn antennas are commonly used as feeders for such transceivers. Moreover, multiple satellite systems use dual-polarized antennas to enable polarization diversity. This article proposes a dual-polarized satellite feeding structure consisting of an orthomode transducer with a quad ridge common port loaded by a quad ridged horn antenna. The proposed OMT exploits a one-fold symmetry to eliminate the coupling to the in-band higher-order modes within the common port. The proposed design operates in Ka-band from (25-28.5 GHz). The integrated system achieves a matching level below -15 dB with a stable gain of 14.2 ± 0.8 dB over the operating band.