A 94 GHz Monopulse Duplexing Horn Antenna for a 3-D Tracking Radar

This article presents the first demonstration of a full-waveguide feed at W-band, enabling transmit-receive duplexing and 2-D tracking of targets. The proposed device is a compact unit designed to be used as feed of a 94 GHz space-borne radar. Its duplexing concept relies on a septum orthomode trans...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on antennas and propagation 2022-10, Vol.70 (10), p.8973-8982
Main Authors: Ferreras, Marta, Barba, Mariano, Grajal, Jesus
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Boresights
Circular polarization
Circular waveguides
duplexer
Duplexers
Feeds
Horn antennas
monopulse
multimode
orthomode transducer (OMT)
Polarization
Polarizers
Radar
Radar tracking
Spaceborne radar
Target tracking
TM01
Tracking radar
Transducers
W-band
waveguide
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Summary:This article presents the first demonstration of a full-waveguide feed at W-band, enabling transmit-receive duplexing and 2-D tracking of targets. The proposed device is a compact unit designed to be used as feed of a 94 GHz space-borne radar. Its duplexing concept relies on a septum orthomode transducer polarizer for transmitting and receiving sum signals with opposite circular polarizations. Additionally, the first higher order mode of circular waveguide (TM01) is allowed to propagate inside the device to extract a difference signal for tracking. By comparing received sum and difference signals in amplitude and phase, both angular directions of a target position can be derived. A prototype of the duplexer was fabricated and tested: measurements at 94 GHz show return loss and isolation above 23 dB at all ports, with reasonable performance from 92 to 96 GHz. The measured monopulse characteristic enables 2-D tracking of targets deviated by less than 8.5° from boresight.
ISSN:0018-926X
1558-2221
DOI:10.1109/TAP.2022.3177545