Due to the time-dependent load-elongation characteristic of cables, the cable-net reflector antenna shows a creep and recovery behaviour which has limited the development of the cable-net reflector antenna with high frequency and high stability. Therefore, this study is dedicated to investigating a time-dependent radiation pattern analysis method for cable-net reflector antennas. Based on the physical optics (PO) method, formulas are firstly established for the time-dependent far-field radiated pattern analysis. To avoid the repetitive computation of PO radiation integrals and improve the calculation efficiency, the exponential error terms are expanded by the Taylor series at the mean values of phase errors in each small region and the time factor is separated from the integral for some special case. Eventually, an axis-symmetric reflector antenna is taken as a numerical example to verify the practicability, validity and robustness of the proposed method.

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Time-dependent radiation pattern analysis of cable-net reflector antennas

References

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