Contoured Beam Design Method for Deployable Cable Mesh Reflector Antennas

Abstract

For the beamforming design of deployable cable mesh reflector antennas, a contoured beam design method based on the direct expansion method of the reflecting surface, function expansion method, is proposed. The method is divided into two parts, one for the initial model design of the mesh reflector surface and the other for the contoured beam optimization synthesis. According to the design requirements of the cable mesh reflector antennas, the initial configuration is designed and all internal nodes are guaranteed to be on the ideal paraboloid. With the Jacobi-Fourier function expansion being derived, the ideal shaped reflector surface is represented by a set of orthogonal global expansion. By projecting nodes coordinate onto the ideal shaped reflector, the mesh-shaped reflecting surface is obtained, and its far-field pattern is calculated using the physical optical method (PO). Finally, an optimization model is built based on the electrical performance index of far-field observation points. Among them, the design variable is the Jacobi-Fourier expansion coefficient of the reflecting surface. In this paper, the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is employed to solve the optimization model. Numerical simulation shown that the beamforming design method of the mesh-shaped reflector antenna greatly reduces the calculation amount and optimization time compared with the previous work, besides fulfills the design requirements of far field pattern for coverage area. The method is correct and effective.