Design of Ka-Band Front End of Fully Polarized Radiometer

Ya-Fen Ge, Qing Li, Kai Zhou, Hong-Da Lu, Yong Liu, Li-Ming Si, and Xin Lv
Beijing Key Laboratory of Millimeter Wave and Terahertz Technology,
Department of Electronic Engineering, School of Information and Electronics,
Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, Peoples Republic of China
A Ka-band front end of fully polarized microwave radiometer is designed, which consists of ortho-mode transducer (OMT) and
multimode horn (MMH). The front end is analyzed using the finite element method. The simulation results show it has a good
performance. The two ports isolation of the front end is larger than 53dB, the gain of the front end is larger than 22.4dBi, the sidelobe
level is less than -24.9dB and the VSWR in the bandwidth is lower than 1.2.
Index Terms fully polarized microwave radiometer, ortho-mode transducer (OMT), multimode horn (MMH).

consists of a square waveguide (1 in Fig.1), a side waveguide

(2 in Fig.1), a ladder match blocks (3 in Fig.1)[8]. Port A
transmits orthogonal TE10 mode and TE01 mode, ports B and
C transmit orthogonal TE10 fundamental mode. The block
size of the ladder impedance matching, the position and size
of the coupling aperture are key parameters in designing such
a structure of OMT.

I. INTRODUCTION
Fully polarized microwave radiometer plays an important
role in remotely sensing sea surface wind vector from space, it
gets all the polarization information of the target by measuring
the Stokes vector of the target, realizing the completely use of
electromagnetic wave frequency, phase, amplitude and polarization in microwave remote sensing[1-3]. And it can provide
crucial valuable information for short-term weather forecast,
meteorological and oceanographic studies. However, performance of fully polarized microwave radiometer system mostly
depends on the performance of the front end, therefore, an
excel-lent front end is quite important [4-7].
In this paper, we took the method of combination of orthomode transducer (OMT) and multimode horn (MMH), and a
front end of fully polarized microwave radiometer with excellent electrical performance, compact and reasonable structure
is designed. The OMT has three ports, one is square, the others is rectangle. We took the design ideas of square waveguide
staircase impedance matching and waveguide aperture coupled, and its structure is compact, simple, stability and facilitate
processing [8]. But most of all, its electrical performance is
excellent, it has high isolation, low insertion loss and VSWR
characterristics. Multimode conical horn also has outstanding
electrical performance, its main advantage contain high gain,
very symmetrical direction pattern, low sidelobe. The front
end has a range of applications in engineering.
The purpose of this work is to present an analysis of the
OMT and the MMH, this analysis can give useful direction in
designing a front end of fully polarized microwave radiometer.
In Section II, the mechanism of operation of the OMT is
briefly discussed. In Section III, the mechanism of operation
of the MMH is briefly discussed. In Section IV, an analysis of
8mm OMT and MMH is presented, simulation results of both
are also given.

Fig.1 the structure of OMT

A. Square Waveguide Design

The relationship between the cut-off wavelength  c of the

main modes TE10, TE01 in the square waveguide and the
square waveguide edge length a can be described as
(1)
 c=2a
In order to suppress the generation of high-order mode in
waveguide, based on engineering experience, when working
bandwidth is determined, the ratio of the low frequency fL in
the working band to the cut-off frequency fc of the square waveguide is a constant k (k generally value 1.1-1.5 )[6]. Further
expression is given as
fL=khfc
(2)
Combine equations (1) and (2), we can calculate the edge
length of the square waveguide.
B. Impedance Matching Design
As shown in Fig.1, in order to achieve impedance matching
between the square waveguide and the rectangular waveguide
B, we use the ladder impedance transformation structure [7-8].

II. OMT DESIGN

OMT can be expressed as a three-port network on the physical structure (but it is a four-port network electrically), and it

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978-1-4673-6329-7/13/$31.00 2013 IEEE



The theoretical size of the ladder impedance matching device may be determined by the three formulas.

Now well explain how to design it. Its principle structure is

shown in Fig.2

III. MMH DESIGN

=

=
=

=

=

Multimode conical horn antenna is a high efficiency antenna with widely application, and it overcome many disadvantages of base-mode conical horn, such as unequal of beamwidth,
phase center of E-plane and H-plane doesnt coincide, high
sidelobe of E-plane and so on[9-11]. Otherwise, fabrication is
relatively simple, so it is widely used [12].
Physical mechanism of multimode horn is as follows: As
we all know, the base mode of the circular waveguide is the
TE11 mode, and now the radius of the circular is equal to
 , and the peak level of the cross- polarization of direction pattern is very low[13-15]. TE1n mode has contribution
to the pattern of E-plane and H-plane, but TM1n mode only
has contribution to the pattern of E-plane. Because the E-plane
pattern of TE11 narrower than that of H-plane when horn
work in the base mode TE11, the peak level of crosspolarization must be high, so in general, the feed working in
the base mode is a low efficiency feed. If TM11 mode (or
other higher mode) could be introduced to the base mode, and
properly adjusting the relative phase of high-order mode and
base mode, it is possible to make the E-plane pattern almost
the same with the H-plane pattern. Thereby we can obtain
rotation axis symmetric patterns and achieve the purpose of
equalization of E-plane pattern and H-plane. Especially to be
emphasized here is that the so-called equalization is using
TM1n mode to make E-plane pattern move closer to the Hplane pattern [12]. This is the basic concept of the multimode
mechanism.

K

K
K

K

Fig.2 principle structure of impedance matching

Now consider the principle structure as shown in figure.2,

Z0-Z4 is the equivalent impedance of each order respectively,
h1, h2, h3 is the step height, and t is the ladder length. The
equivalent resistance of the rectangular waveguide is given by
(3)
E 

=F 



 D 

 

Chebyshev ladder impedance transformer design principles

are not mentioned here, we only give its conclusions. The
relationship between impedance and ladder height is
=Q
(4)
 +Q
=
E
And the length of each stage is
(5)
/  / +
/ + 
The theoretical size of the ladder impedance matching device may be determined by the three formulas.
C. Coupling Aperture Design
The microwave field at the coupling aperture of the side wall of the square waveguide is very complex and require quite
difficult theoretical calculations only could get an approximate
value. In order to facilitate the application of engineering
practice, the size of the hole is generally determined by the
empirical formulas [3]. As we all know, the waveguide
wavelen-gth of rectangular waveguide is expressed as

J 


 
 

 D 

Fig.3 Configuration of a multimode circular horn

Multimode horn is actually the properly combination of a

high-order mode excitation device and phase shift segment. In
design multimode horn as shown in Figure.3, the key is to
adjust the modes ratio and phase shift quantity [9]. The
formulas of modes ratio and phase shift is very complex, dont
having the engineering guiding significance, and what we can
do is to optimize its value only by simulation.
The horn-flare half-angle  is given by

(6)


The relationship between the length of the coupling aperture

and the wavelength of the waveguide at the center frequency
is given by
d= (0.3~0.4)  g0
(7)
And the relationship between the width of the coupling aperture and the wavelength of the waveguide at the center frequency is
w= (0.1~0.2)  g0
(8)

PF 

(9)
 DF
where  mc is the maximum quadratic-type phase front
difference (refer to axis) at the horn aperture (approximately
WDQ  



the same for all the modes) and

wavelength at the center frequency.

is the free-space

IV. FRONT END DESIGN OF 8MM FULL POLARIZED RADIOMETER

A front end of 8mm full polarized radiometer is designed
based on the aforementioned microwave approach. The front
end structure is shown in Fig.4. The structure consists of three
parts: MMH, OMT and Balanced output waveguide. Port 1 is
the horizontally polarized port, port 2 is the vertically polarized port. As we all know, whatever the polarization of the
electromagnetic wave is, it can be regarded as a combination
of the horizontal polarization component and the vertical polarization component. Therefore, by measuring the polarization
components of port 1 and port 2, we can know the polarization
of electromagnetic waves into the multimode horn.

Balanced output waveguide

MMH

OMT

Fig.6 ISO of Port1 and Port2

The ISO (Isolation) of Port1 and Port2 is plotted in Fig.6,

and we can see that the ISO is good than 60dB in the whole
frequency band of 34GHz to 40GHz.
The purpose of the front end we designed is working well at
35GHz to 39GHz. Radiation characteristics of front end of full
polarized radiometer is what we are most concerned about.
The gain patterns of 35GHz, 36GHz, 37GHz, 38GHz, and
39GHz are shown in Fig.7 to Fig.11, successively.

Port1

Port2

Fig.4 Configuration of a front end of 8mm full polarized radiometer

Primary model is simulated and optimized by HFSS software and the simulated results are shown as follows. The simulated VSWR of the two ports are presented in Fig.5, respectively.

Fig.7 Gain pattern of Phi=00 and Phi=900 at 35GHz

Fig.5 Simulated VSWR of the two ports

It can be seen that the VSWR of both ports are lower than
1.2 in the frequency band of 35GHz to 39GHz. In actual
applications, the VSWR can be lower by adjusting the tuning
screws in the balanced output waveguide.

Fig.8 Gain pattern of Phi=00 and Phi=900 at 36GHz



has a good performance in the frequency band of 35GHz to

39GHz. The method used in the design of the front end is a
simple, efficient solution with highly engineering guiding
significance.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work is supported by the National High Technology
Research and Development Program of China under Grant
Nos. 2012AA8123012 and 2010CB327505, the Basic
Research Foundation of Beijing Institute of Technology under
Grant No. 20120542015, and the Academy of Satellite
Application under grant No. 2012-1692.
Fig.9 Gain pattern of Phi=00 and Phi=900 at 37GHz

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Fig.10 Gain pattern of Phi=00 and Phi=900 at 38GHz

Fig.11 Gain pattern of Phi=00 and Phi=900 at 39GHz

As can be seen from the above five figures, the rotational

symmetry of each pattern is very good, the gain is larger than
22dB, the sidelobe level is less than-25dB in the frequency
band.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we design a Ka-band front end of fully
polarized microwave radiometer, based on theoretical analysis
and HFSS simulation software. The simulation results show it