Farragsat/Luneberg-lens Antenna

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Vorg

SatelliteGuys Family
Original poster
Aug 7, 2006
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Arizona
Awhile back tele satellite magazine had something about this spherical antenna that acts like lens instead of a reflector. A guy in Egypt was working on it and called it Farragsat. I thought it would be neat if this was combined with tech from flat panel systems by putting a narrow band 1/2 way around the sphere with the element array and then allow lnb modules to select a sat by selecting a section of elements. Only a few lnbs would be needed and each would have access to every sat vissable. Haven't seen anything like that come out yet and likely they would put a price so high no one would want it.

Last nigh I started googling the sphere antenna again wondering how hard would be to make one. I thought it was a metal sphere, but it seems it made of layers of stuff. Farrago on his site claims he is looking for companies to make the lens and claims its cheep and easy to make. Donig searches on luneberg lens I was only able to find one company selling them, Sumitomo Electronics and they have no pricing. They do also claim to sell the foam for the layers.

As anyone looked into getting/making one of these. I'm am interrested in one large enough to also work with c-band. Seems if it works for ku, it should work for c-band
 
Check out those claims very carefully before you buy. Parabolic reflectors work because the incoming signal is concentrated in phase, I don't think that happens with a spherical antenna.
 
Well, I email the guy about the antennas on his site. No response, but didn't really expect one. Started doing more searches on luneberg lens and horns and found something interresting, metal lens's:
http://www.w1ghz.org/antbook/chap3.pdf
Also found some bits about making horns and a program for getting the right demensions. Looks like Horns are only good for the band designed for, which would mean no c/ku combos. Got lots of reading, find out the diferance between square and cone horns, etc.. If anyone else wants to look into this more, here are some starting places:

Some how-to and a link to a dos program (won't work in w7 x64):
Table of Contents - W1GHZ Microwave Antenna Book ONLINE
Web site of: W1GHZ (n1bwt)

Couple people who made some:
My collection of homemade Antennas for KU
Communication Satellite
 
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