Corner Reflector Antenna

Ahmed Saudi Hassan 2009-06025

#

telecommunication engineering faculty , future University Khartoum Sudan

Abstract corner reflector have been known for more than half a century. This paper point sout some inaccurate data about corner reflector and presents a new set of data related to the design of corner reflector antennas .The antenna performance, gain and band width is optimized by varying antennas geometrical parameters.. And also we can see an example for corner reflector antenna.

I. INTRODUCTION

A corner reflector is a retroreflector consisting of three mutually perpendicular as show can see in figure 1 , intersecting flat surfaces, which reflects waves back directly towards the source, but shifted (translated). The three intersecting surfaces often have square shapes.

Figure 2

Corner reflector antenna using dipole antenna as a feed point . III- How its work ?

Figure 1

II- Design corner reflector antenna, consisting of two flat metal surfaces at a right angle, with a dipole antenna in front of them as show in figure2.

The incoming ray is reflected three times, once by each surface, which results in a reversal of direction. To see this, the three corresponding normal vectors of the corner's perpendicular sides can be considered to form a basis (a rectangular coordinate system) (x, y, z) in which to represent the direction of an arbitrary incoming ray, [a, b, c]. When the ray reflects from the first side, say x, the ray's x component, a, is reversed to -a while the y and z components are unchanged, resulting in a direction of [-a, b, c]. Similarly, when reflected from side y and finally from side z, the b and c components are reversed. So the ray direction goes from [a, b, c] to [-a, b, c] to [-a, -b, c] to [-a, -b, -c] and it leaves the corner reflector with all three components of direction exactly reversed

Figure 3

V- Corner Reflector Antenna Applications Radar corner reflectors

Length ( L) of the sides of reflector should exceed 2x wave-length to secure the characteristics. Reflector width W should be greater then 1x wave-length for a half-wave radiator. The reflector can be made of wire netting, sheet metal or even fabricated metal spines arranged in a V-formation. Such spines must be parallel to the radiator with a spine spacing of less then 0.1 wave-length of the operating frequency. Spacing between radiator and vertex should be adjustable. This might be the final key to tune-up such an antenna after radiator length is settled for a specific operating frequency Impedance of these antennas will change upon operating frequency. Typical value will be around 50 ohm to 75 ohm. A slightly higher S.W.R (1.7:1) has to be expected on lower end of the band. Fig.A also shows relationship between resultant impedance and a change in wavelength (frequency). Following is a table that shows the general dimension of such antenna at UHF and VHF band (Fig.B). All value below are in inches (except Band in MHz). Final dimension might vary due to difference in materials employed.

Radar corner reflectors are designed to reflect the microwave radio waves emitted by radar sets back toward the radar antenna. This causes them to show a strong "return" on radar screens

optical corner reflectors In optics, corner reflectors typically consist of three mirrors or reflective prism faces which return an incident light beam in the opposite direction

With WIFI antenna To increase the gain of WIFI antenna IV- Parameters of corner reflector

At the same time the feed impedance of the antenna falls towards a lower value and starts creating difficulty in matching. In practice this angle is usually at 90 degree or 60 degree while 90 degree is easier to be matched although gain is lower. Following are some key points when designing such antenna :

Conclusions A Corner Reflector Antennas offering is a low cost, high efficiency. It is parameters control the increase or decrase Gain and bandwidth A Corner Reflector Antennas has high performance. And use To increase the directivity of an antenna, a fairly intuitive solution is to use a reflector. REFERENCES [1] Eng .Mutaz Hamed lecs [2] http://www.antenna-theory.com/antennas