Suppressing Side-Lobe Radiations of Horn Antenna by Loading Metamaterial Lens

We propose a new approach to control the amplitude and phase distributions of electromagnetic fields over the aperture of a horn antenna. By loading a metamaterial lens inside the horn antenna, a tapered amplitude distribution of the aperture field is achieved, which can suppress the side-lobe radiations of the antenna. The metamaterial is further manipulated to achieve a flat phase distribution on the horn aperture to avoid the gain reduction that usually suffers in the conventional low-sidelobe antenna designs. A prototype of the metamaterial-loaded horn antenna is designed and fabricated. Both numerical simulations and measured results demonstrate the tapered aperture-field distribution and significant reduction of side-lobe and back-lobe radiations in the operating frequency band.