Sector Antennas 101: Horns, May 2021

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Sector antennas for WISP networks have a lot of parameters. Horns are excellent sector antennas for 5 GHz unlicensed networks, why is that? We dive into the details of horn antenna technology here.

But what makes an antenna a great sector antenna? In 5 GHz unlicensed networks, it is noise suppression capability, stable gain across whole useful spectrum, appropriate gain, wide bandwidth, stability of radiation pattern across the whole band, durability & reliability, ease of deployment and the list goes on.. But let's look at horns now.

As everything, even horns have their pros and cons. The advantages of horn antennas are:

Beam efficiency is a measure of side lobes with values from 0 - the worst case, to 100 % - the best case. RF elements horns, for example, have BE values between 90 and 99 %. This qualifies them as the best antennas on the WISP market in terms of noise suppression.

2. Flexible beam width - horn antenna design is very flexible. By adjusting the shape of the antenna body length and aperture shape, various antennas can be designed. For example, RF elements horns have beam widths from 30° to 90° with 10 degree steps and gain variations from 18 to 9 dBi. Wide range of horns is the ultimate antenna toolset for unlicensed 5 GHz WISP networks that let you optimize the network coverage.

3. Frequency stability - horns have stable maximum gain as well as the rest of the radiation pattern over the whole useful frequency band. This property is important for impeccable user experience - your customers will enjoy stable and reliable internet connection, if you use horn antenna sectors.

The drawbacks of horn antenna technology can be summed up to two main points.
First is the manufacturing cost - horns are typically manufactured as a custom device, which makes them expensive. Nevertheless, at RF elements we optimized the production process of horns to a degree that enables mass production and maintain high quality standard at the same time.
Second, the maximum gain horn antennas can have is limited by the physics of these antennas. Also, scaling horn antennas for higher gain makes their volume grow, as opposed to patch arrays. Nevertheless, in WISP networks high gain is really not necessary. In fact, ideally, the gain of any (CPE or AP) antenna should be as small as link budget allows.

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0:00 Introduction
3:43 Horn antennas basics
5:43 Cut off frequency
7:04 Waveguide modes
10:30 Horn - aperture antenna
11:48 Horn design graph
14:22 Horn strength 1: No side lobes possible
20:20 Horn strength 2: Flexible beam width
23:20 Horn strength 3: Frequency stability
30:08 Horn strength 4: Coverage pattern
34:12 Horn drawback 1: Manufacturing cost
35:48 Horn drawback 2: Maximum gain limitation
37:10 Summary