Parabolic Torus Reflector Antenna
WIPL-D Pro is well-established full wave 3D EM solver based on state-of-the-art MoM. MoM is inherently suitable for radiating problems and simulation of electrically moderate and large structures. A typical example are reflector antennas, with diameters measured in tens or hundreds of wavelengths.
The objective of this research was to design a low cost parabolic solar dish concentrator with small-to moderate size for direct electricity generation. Such model can be installed in rural areas which are not connected to governmental grid. Three diameters of the dish; 5, 10 and 20 m are investigated and the focal point to dish diameter ratio. A parabolic antenna is an antenna that uses a parabolic reflector, a curved surface with the cross-sectional shape of a parabola, to direct the radio waves. The most common form is shaped like a dish and is popularly called a dish antenna or parabolic dish. The main advantage of a parabolic antenna is that it has high directivity.
Unique features allow WIPL-D to be unbeatable tool for full wave simulation of electrically large reflectors: quadrilateral mesh, HOBFs, efficient parallelization on multi-core CPU and support for inexpensive GPU cards, built-in reflector pre-meshed primitive. Torus reflector antenna (TRA) is a quasi-parabolic antenna, where the parabola is rotated around an axis which stands vertically to main transmission axis. TRA does not offer excellent aperture efficiency as parabolic reflector.If illuminated with several fixed antennas, it offers an efficient multi-beam operation.
By using anti-symmetry and asymmetry, the number of unknowns is reduced 4 times (less than 25,000 unknowns). Reflector aperture is ~1.8×3 m (60×100 lambda). The kernel runs twice at standard desktop PC. Entire simulation time is measured in minutes and can be additionally speed up by using low-end Nvidia GPU card.
There’s something iconic about dish antennas. Chances are it’s the antenna that non-antenna people think about when they picture an antenna. And for many applications, the directionality and gain of a dish can really help reach out and touch someone. So if you’re looking to tap into a distant WiFi network, this umbrella-turned-dish antenna might be just the thing to build.
Stretching the limits of WiFi connections seems to be a focus of [andrew mcneil]’s builds, at least to judge by his YouTube channel. This portable, foldable dish is intended to increase the performance of one of his cantennas, a simple home-brew WiFi antenna that uses food cans as directional waveguides. The dish is built from the skeleton of an umbrella-style photographer’s flash reflector; he chose this over a discount-store rain umbrella because the reflector has an actual parabolic shape. The reflective material was stripped off and used as a template to cut new gores of metal window screen material. It’s considerably stiffer than the reflector fabric, but it stretches taut between the ribs and can still fold up, at least sort of. An arm was fashioned from dowels to position the cantenna feed-horn at the focus of the reflector; not much detail is given on the cantenna itself, but we assume it’s similar in design to cantennas we’ve featured before.
![Dish Dish](http://www.filebuzz.com/software_screenshot/full/fdtd_antenna_simulator-615270.jpg)
[andrew] hasn’t done rigorous testing yet, but a quick 360° scan from inside his shop showed dozens of WiFi signals, most with really good signals. We’ll be interested to see just how much this reflector increases the cantenna’s performance.