a b b a c d a b t r 1 Port 3 Port 2 Port 1 h f h i e r 2 Enhancement TE 10 Transmission of X-Band Guided Waves Structure Using Mode Extractor-Converter Hassan M. Elkamchouchi 1 Yasser M. Madany 2 Ahmed F. Miligy 3 1 Senior, Member IEEE, Communications and Electronics Depart., Alexandria university, Egypt, e-mail: helkamchouchi@ieee.org. 2 Member IEEE, Communications and Electronics Department, Alexandria university, Alexandria, Egypt, e-mail: ymadany@ieee.org. 3 Communications and Electronics Department, Alexandria university, Alexandria, Egypt, e-mail: ahmed_miligy73@yahoo.com. Abstract The waveguide antenna arrays provide a number of advantages in many radar, remote sensing and satellite applications. The advantages are related with the antenna planar form, strength of the construction, high power operation capability, high efficiency, small thickness and weight. In this paper, guided waves with enhancement TE 10 transmission using mode extractor-converter structure has been introduced and analyzed using the full 3D electromagnetic field inside a structure based on the finite element method. The proposed structure presents TE 10 enhancement transmission coefficient ratio up to 18.74, 22.44 and 26.56 for cylindrical, cone and horn transition waveguide channel compared to the conventional waveguide feeder. The proposed structure characteristics such as transmission coefficient, the magnitude of electric field are obtained to demonstrate the performance without and with different mode extractor-converter designs. 1 INTRODUCTION Modern communication and radar antennas employ highly sophisticated feed systems. The feed design quality continues to be critical to the antenna overall performance. At higher microwave frequencies, waveguide is a transmission medium, mainly due to its low RF loss and high power handling capability. Over the recent decade a significant research effort was invested for waveguide components and entire feed systems [1]-[4]. In this paper, guided waves with enhancement TE 10 transmission using mode extractor-converter structure has been introduced and analyzed using HFSS simulator [5]. The proposed feeder structure has been designed to meet the requirements for X- band array waveguide radar antenna applications [6]- [7] at operating frequency band 11-12 GHz. There are several constraints on the design including mode purity; these are not convenient for the design process. It is possible to propagate several modes TE 10 , TE 01 and TE 20 of electromagnetic waves within a structure. The physical dimensions of a structure determine the cutoff frequency for each mode. If the frequency of the impressed signal is above the cutoff frequency for a given mode, the electromagnetic energy can be transmitted through the guide for that particular mode with minimal attenuation. Otherwise, the electro-magnetic energy with a frequency below cutoff for that particular mode will be attenuated to a negligible value in a relatively short distance. The dominant mode TE 10 in a particular structure is the mode having the lowest cutoff frequency. The power of TE 10 , TE 01 and TE 20 modes is combined into the proposed structure. To enhance the dominant mode TE10 transmission, higher modes of the combined power is extracted from the line using mode extractor at specific position and converted into TE 10 mode which was injected to the same line at another position. The proposed guided waves structure characteristics such as transmission coefficient, the magnitude of electric field are obtained to demonstrate the performance without and with different mode extractor-converter designs. 2 GUIDED WAVES DESIGN STRUCTURE In order to achieve the widest possible usable bandwidth for the TE 10 mode, the bandwidth interval is [f 10 , 2f 10 ]. Commonly used rectangular waveguides have an aspect ratio (height /width) of approximately 0.5 and λ g = 111.52 mm. 2.1 Without mode extractor-converter Figure 1: The main dimensions of the proposed structure without mode extractor-converter. The unit cell guided waves structure is basically composed of an input and two horizontal linear coupled output ports denoted by 1, 2 and 3, respect- ively. The ports dimension is 28.125 14.0625 mm 978-1-61284-978-2/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE 603