Problem 3:

This design is an alternative to the most common parabolic antenna design, called "front feed",
in which the feed antenna itself is mounted suspended in front of the dish at the focus, pointed
back toward the dish. The Cassegrain design has several advantages over front feed that can
justify its increased complexity:

The feed antennas and associated waveguides and "front end" electronics can be located
on or behind the dish, rather than suspended in front where they block part of the outgoing
beam. Therefore this design is used for antennas with bulky or complicated feeds, such
as satellite communication ground antennas, radio telescopes, and the antennas on
some communication satellites.
Another advantage, important in satellite ground antennas, is that because the feed
antenna is directed forward, rather than backward toward the dish as in a front-fed
antenna, the spillover sidelobes caused by portions of the beam that miss the secondary
reflector are directed upwards toward the cold sky rather than downwards towards the
warm earth.[2] In receiving antennas this reduces reception of ground noise, resulting in a
lower antenna noise temperature.
Dual reflector shaping: The presence of a second reflecting surface in the signal path allows
additional opportunities for tailoring the radiation pattern for maximum performance. For
example, the gain of ordinary parabolic antennas is reduced because the radiation of the
feed antenna falls off toward the outer parts of the dish, resulting in lower "illumination" of
those parts. In "dual reflector shaping" the shape of the secondary reflector is altered to
direct more signal power to outer areas of the dish, resulting in more uniform illumination
of the primary, to maximize the gain. However, this results in a secondary that is no longer
precisely hyperbolic (though it is still very close), so the constant phase property is lost. This
phase error, however, can be compensated for by slightly tweaking the shape of the
primary mirror. The result is a higher gain, or gain/spillover ratio, at the cost of surfaces
that are trickier to fabricate and test.[3][4] Other dish illumination patterns can also be
synthesized, such as patterns with high taper at the dish edge for ultra-low
spillover sidelobes, and patterns with a central "hole" to reduce feed shadowing.
Another reason for using the Cassegrain design is to increase the focal length of the
antenna, to improve the field of view Parabolic reflectors used in dish antennas have a large
curvature and short focal length, to locate the focal point near the mouth of the dish, to
reduce the length of the supports required to hold the feed structure or secondary
reflector. The focal ratio (f-number, the ratio of the focal length to the dish diameter) of
typical parabolic antennas is 0.25 - 0.8, compared to 3 - 8 for parabolic mirrors used in
optical systems such as telescopes. A "flatter" parabolic dish with a long focal length would

require an impractically elaborate support structure to hold the feed rigid with respect to
the dish. However, the drawback of this small focal ratio is that the antenna has a small
field of view, the angular width that it can effectively focus. Modern parabolic antennas in
radio telescopes and communications satellites often use arrays of feedhorns clustered
around the focal point, to create a particular beam pattern. These require good off-axis
focusing characteristics. The convex secondary reflector of the Cassegrain increases the
focal length, and thus the field of view, so these antennas usually use a Cassegrain design.
The longer focal length also improves cross polarization discrimination of off-axis feeds,
important in satellite antennas that use the two orthogonal polarization modes to transmit
separate channels of information.

Types of dual reflector antennas

Cassegrain:

In telecommunications and radar, a Cassegrain antenna is a parabolic antenna in which

the feed antenna is mounted at or behind the surface of the concave main parabolic
reflector dish and is aimed at a smaller convex secondary reflector suspended in front of the
primary reflector. The beam of radio waves from the feed illuminates the secondary reflector,
which reflects it back to the main reflector dish, which reflects it forward again to form the
desired beam. The Cassegrain design is widely used in parabolic antennas, particularly in large
antennas such as those in satellite ground stations, radio telescopes, and communication
satellites.

Geometry
The primary reflector is a paraboloid, while the shape of the convex secondary reflector is
a hyperboloid. The geometrical condition for radiating a collimated, plane wave beam is that
the feed antenna is located at the far focus of the hyperboloid, while the focus of the primary
reflector coincides with the near focus of the hyperboloid. [1] Usually the secondary reflector
and the feed antenna are located on the central axis of the dish. However in offset
Cassegrain configurations, the primary dish reflector is asymmetric, and its focus, and the
secondary reflector, are located to one side of the dish, so that the secondary reflector does
not partially obstruct the beam.

Gregorian antenna
A second form of the dual reflector is the Gregorian reflector. It has a concave elliptic
subreflector. The Gregorian subreflector is more distant from the main reflector and, thus, it
requires more support. Dual-reflector antennas for earth terminals have another important
advantage beside the location of the main feed. They have almost no spillover toward the noisy
ground, as do the single-feed reflector antennas. Their spillover (if any) is directed toward the
much less noisy sky region. Both, the Cassegrain and the Gregorian reflector systems have their
origins in optical telescopes and are named after their inventors.