Ground based disc cone antenna with ultra-smooth spectral characteristics

Abstract

Designing a wideband antenna free from spectral features of widths narrower than the operating bandwidth with frequency independent radiation and impedance characteristics is an engineering challenge. These stringent requirements are observed to be required for an antenna whenever it is used for detecting the faint feature imprinted in the radio spectrum of the cosmic microwave background. The present paper discusses in detail, the parameters, both electrical and structural, influencing the smoothness of the spectral response of the disccone antenna. They are modeled and optimized using WIPL-d an electromagnetic simulation software, to get a spectral smoothness of the order of few parts in 105 in the frequency range 50-100 MHz. A prototype has been built and tested for validating the design.