A Design Approach for AstroMesh-Type Contoured-Beam Reflector Antennas

The shaped reflectors with contoured beams are usually concave-convex surfaces, but the traditional 2-layer AstroMesh reflector antennas must be tensioned in equilibrium without external forces and cannot support concave-convex reflector surfaces. To address this problem, an innovative approach is proposed for AstroMesh reflector antennas to provide contoured beams. First, to realize the force balance of the concave-convex reflector, a three-layer cable net structure approach is proposed to support the concave-convex-shaped mesh reflector. Second, a contoured beam synthesis model is established to design the shaped mesh reflector, in which the surface node coordinates in the z-direction are chosen as the design variables to make the reflector realize the desired contoured beam pattern. Then, a pretension design model is established to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach in practical engineering. Finally, a typical example is employed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.