Depolarization Characteristics of Single Reflector Antennas

Parabolic reflector antennas are widely used in satellite communications, or tracking radars. Applications where cross-polarization (x-pol) rejection or conversion from linear (LP) to circular polarization (CP) are performed at the reflector surface are of high interest in order to simplify the reflector’s feed. Understanding the cause of the wave’s depolarization is therefore a high priority. In this talk, single front-fed and offset reflectors will be presented, as well as the different definitions of polarization available for the feeds, in order to analyze the depolarization that arise when feed and reflector are joined together.