Octave bandwidth compact turnstile-based orthomode transducer

Abstract

A 64% instantaneous bandwidth scalable turnstile-based orthomode transducer to be used in the so-called extended C-band satellite link is presented. The proposed structure overcomes the current practical bandwidth limitations by adding a single-step widening at the junction of the four output rectangular waveguides. This judicious modification, together with the use of reduced-height waveguides and E-plane bends and power combiners, enables to approach the theoretical structure bandwidth limit with a simple, scalable and compact design. The presented orthomode transducer architecture exhibits a return loss better than 25 dB, an isolation between rectangular ports better than 50 dB and a transmission loss less than 0.04 dB in the 3.67 GHz range, which represents state-of-the-art achievement in terms of bandwidth. © 2010 IEEE.