Design and Analysis of Corrugated Conical Horn Antennas with Terahertz Applications

The focus of this thesis is the design and analysis of corrugated conical horn antennas for use in the THz region of the electromagnetic spectrum, for the company SWISSto12®. These antennas are designed to work across the industry standard WR frequency bands, as free-space radiators or as part of a larger quasi-optical network. The main analysis tools used in this work were the in-house mode-matching code, SCATTER, and the commercially available CST: Microwave Studio, which makes use of the finite integration technique. A version of SCATTER which incorporated creation of a corrugated horn antenna’s geometry from user chosen inputs was used to perform parametric sweep analysis when designing the horn antennas. The main design stages were (1) a rectangular to circular transition from a WR rectangular waveguide to a circular waveguide input, (2) a circular smooth-walled to corrugated transition and (3) a transition from a small diameter corrugated waveguide to either a large diameter corrugated waveguide or to free-space. Several styles were examined for the various design stages; the choice of style for the final designs was influenced not only by their performance but also by manufacturing feasibility and cost. Overall, nine individual designs for the WR-1.0. WR-1.5, WR-3.4, WR-5.1, WR-6.5, WR-6.5+, WR-10 and WR-10+ bands have been completed to meet the criteria set by SWISSto12; two of these designs have been manufactured and tested and the results from the measurements performed are presented here.

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

masters

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

National University of Ireland Maynooth

Year dc:date.issued

2015

Author dc:creator

• Cahill, Fiachra

Language dc:language

en