Improvements in Edge of Coverage Gain for S-Band Sat-Com Applications Using Electromagnetic Band Gap Based Feeds

This paper reports a design of EBG-based feed for Multi-Beam Antenna arrays to improve Edge of Coverage Gain (EoC) for satellite communication applications in the S-band. A secondary analysis has been carried out to find an appropriate phase center reference for our EBG-based feeds. Comparisons have been made with conventional horn antenna feeds in terms of peak gain, coverage gain and beam-to-beam isolation. When conventional horn feeds are substituted with the proposed EBG-based feed for our existing reflector antenna, EoC gain was improved by at least 1.72 dB and maximum by 2.24 dB for a 200MHz bandwidth from 2.5 to 2.7 GHz. Side Lobe Levels better than −27.1 dB were obtained at 2.6 GHz. The EBG-based feeds have been designed with a single-layer Partially Reflective Screen and a fully metallic construction for high-power handling.