Relaxing on your couch watching your favorite sports or series? Thanks to the satellite dish, which converts the microwave signals into electric signals for usage in our computer, television, or any other smart devices connected.
Learn about the dish antenna price in UAE, if you are looking for a high-quality one under your budget. There are several mechanisms, following which you get to enjoy a better quality picture. So, how many types of dish antenna are there?
Read on to find out!
4 Types of Dish Antennas to Know
There are four main types of antennas that are widely used in satellite communications and without whom the sector will be incomplete.
They are the following:
- Wire antennas
- Horn antennas
- Reflector antennas
- Array antennas
Let’s know about each of them in detail, one by one:
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Wire Antennas
Wire antennas are used as receiving antennas for long, medium, and short wave bands. They can even be used as a transmitting antenna for small outdoor, temporary, or emergency transmitting stations.
Also, wire antennas are handy in places where permanent antennas cannot be installed. They are the most basic form of antennas. Monopole and dipole antennas also fall under this category.
Wire antennas are perfect for covering a wide range of access and supplying signal strength in all directions. In other words, they are omnidirectional antennas that can provide signal strength everywhere.
Tracking, telemetry, and communication for the TTCM subsystem are some of the common uses of the wire antennas.
Range of wire antenna:
The frequency range of a wire antenna ranges from 20 MHz to 2.2 GHz.
Pros
- Simple construction
- Comes with a huge range of beam width
- Can radiate on any kind of frequency
- Has a sharp directional pattern
- Can concentrate radiation even at low vertical angles
- Pretty affordable to get under any budget
Cons
- Needs an antenna tuner unit or a matching mechanism to function
- Can be a concern for lightning
- Prone to shock hazards when a single wire feed line is used in a long wire antenna
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Horn Antennas
Also known as microwave horns, these antennas consist of a flaring metal waveguide coming in an exact shape similar to a horn for directing the radio waves in a beam. This is where the term horn comes from.
Simply put, they are used to transmit the radio waves from a waveguide (such as a metal pipe used for carrying them) out into space or to receive the radio waves into a waveguide.
They are widely used in satellites to offer a wide coverage of the earth. Plus, they are even used in the microwave frequency range. You can use the same feed horn for signal transmission and receiving.
A device known as a duplexer is employed to splits the two signals. So there is no scope for error and getting connected with each other.
Range of horn antenna:
The operational frequency range of a horn antenna is about 300MHz to 30GHz.
Pros
- Come with a high degree of directivity
- Simple in construction
- Provide a bandwidth of about 10%
- It can deliver a high gain when used with a parabolic reflector disc
Cons
- Radiates energy in a spherical wavefront shape. Meaning, it cannot offer a directive or sharp beam.
- Have a limited gain, such as 20 dB, to improve the antenna gain. Hence the horn opening must be made larger, so the horn’s length can become broad and excessive.
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Reflector Antennas
Reflector antennas consist of one or more reflecting surfaces and a feed system to reflect electromagnetic waves. They can produce beams with a strong signal strength in a particular direction. All credit goes to their mechanisms that have indeed made the highly directional antennas.
And when used in collaboration with parabolic reflectors, the strength increases manifold. No wonder why they are widely used in the radars, satellite communications, remote sensing, deep-space telemetry, radio astronomy, telecommunications, and broadcasting sectors.
Range of reflector antenna:
The frequency range of the reflector antennas is more than 1MHz.
Pros
- Lighter in weight
- Structural simplicity
- Smaller in size
- Low expense
- Can be used as both a transmitting and receiving antenna due to the reciprocity principle
- With a parabolic reflector, the feed can be used in a variety of modes, such as center feed, Cassegrain, or offset feed.
Cons
- Surface distortion can happen in bigger-sized dishes. Hence, you will need a wide mesh rather than a continuous surface to lessen this problem.
- To ensure the maximum output, the feed must be placed exactly at the focus of the antenna, which is quite impossible to achieve practically.
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Array Antennas
An array antenna is a combination of numerous connected antennas that basically work together as a single antenna for transmitting or receiving the radio waves.
Here, each of the individual antennas, known as elements, is typically connected to a single receiver or transmitter through the feedlines to give power to the elements in a particular direction. This ultimately results in a better transmission in that specific area.
With the help of array antennas, you can form multiple beams coming from a single aperture. Satellite communications, wireless communications, radar communications, and astronomical study are some of the popular applications of array antennas.
Range of array antenna:
The frequency of the array antenna typically covers the range from 200 MHz to 3 GHz.
Pros
- Has a high antenna gain with a bigger side-lobe attenuation
- Can do the multi-functional operation by simultaneous creation of several beams
- High beam agility
- Super fast change of beam direction, ranging in microseconds
- Improves communication reliability
- Can cancel out any kind of interference coming from particular directions
Cons
- Complex structure
- Quite expensive
- Can deteriorate the overall antenna performant by producing a substantial amount of mutual coupling
To Conclude
Hopefully, you have no more confusion regarding the four types of dish antenna. Each of them plays quite a big role in our communication sector to make it super fast and more convenient than ever.