3D Metal Printed Polarization Reconfigurable Horn Antenna with Solid & Meshed Structures: Future works for SATCOM applications

Future SATCOM terminals need highly accurate phased array antennas. However, with higher frequency and smaller antenna sizes there are few challenges when using typical patch antennas. For instance, in K, Ka and Q band the small sized feeding topologies and antenna structure can suffer from variation due to manufacturing and material tolerances. For beam steering this may affect the final beam position and its gain value. For GEO this could be more crucial due to limited power margins. Increasingly, highly accurate (accurate to microns) and repeatable 3D metal printing technology is gaining attentions for producing horn antennas for mm wave Satcom operations. Horns are bigger than the standard half wavelength patches. Due to this they have lesser structural variation and reproduction error. This aspect could guarantee the array beam performance under fixed excitation conditions. In this paper, using a 3D metal (titanium) printing technology, a K and Ka band polarization reconfigurable horn antenna is fabricated. The 3D printed antenna prototype results are validated with simulation results. Further, to minimize the antenna weight while maintaining its performance, a 3D printed horn antenna with a meshed structure is also proposed in this work.