Effects of random surface errors on the performance of paraboloidal reflectors

Abstract

A program based on ray tracing has been developed to study the radiation patterns of paraboloidal reflector antennas whose surfaces are subjected to random errors with the emphasis on using an accurate representation of the statistics of the random surface errors. An ensemble of Gaussian random surfaces is created to be used with the Monte Carlo simulation. The average patterns from different surface root-mean-square values are presented for both the co-polarized and cross-polarized fields on the E-plane, H-plane, and 45-degree plane. They are compared with results based on physical optics and the antenna tolerance theory.