A Design Approach for AstroMesh-Type Contoured-Beam Reflector Antennas

The shaped reflectors with contoured beams are usually concave–convex surfaces, but the traditional 2-layer AstroMesh reflector antennas must be tensioned in equilibrium without external forces and cannot support concave–convex reflector surfaces. To address this problem, an innovative approach is proposed for AstroMesh reflector antennas to provide contoured beams. First, to realize the force balance of the concave–convex reflector, a three-layer cable net structure approach is proposed to support the concave–convex-shaped mesh reflector. Second, a contoured beam synthesis model is established to design the shaped mesh reflector, in which the surface node coordinates in the z -direction are chosen as the design variables to make the reflector realize the desired contoured beam pattern. Then, a pretension design model is established to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach in practical engineering. Finally, a typical example is employed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.