Citation
Abstract
A short study was performed to demonstrate the beam-squint effect due to the circular polarization in the beam-waveguide system of DSS 24 and to obtain quantitative values for this squint. Beam squint occurs when a circularly polarized feed illuminates a reflector system in an asymmetric or offset manner. It occurs in the plane transverse to the plane of asymmetry, and its direction changes with the sense of polarization. The beam-squint effect for the nonbeam-waveguide DSN antennas is minimal or nonexistent in the nearly symmetrical configuration of the reflectors. In the beam-waveguide systems, however, there are three asymmetric or offset-fed mirrors, M5, M3, and M2, that cause beam squint. It is shown that the squint is caused primarily by the M5 mirror, and the squint caused by the M3-M2 pair of mirrors is mostly canceled due to their mirror-image symmetry. The maximum amount of the calculated squint in the beam-waveguide system is about 2.75 mdeg, and this translates into a swing value of 5.5 mdeg when a feed switch from right to left polarization is made. The resulting beam-pointing error can cause a gain loss of about 0.07 dB and must be taken into account in the beam-calibration procedures. Suggestions are made for future work on the ways to either reduce or entirely remove the squint effects.
Details
- Volume
- 42-128
- Published
- February 15, 1997
- Pages
- 1–10
- File Size
- 406.8 KB