Numerical Study on the Orthogonality of the Fields Radiated by an Aperture

This work studies the orthogonality of the fields radiated by the different modes of a radiating aperture. Waveguide modes exhibit an orthogonality property at the aperture cross-section that can be used to simplify calculations. However, it is unclear whether this property can be extended to the radiated fields produced by these same modes in apertures antennas, such as horns or open-ended waveguides. A numerical study has been carried out, analysing how the waveguide orthogonality extends to the radiated modal fields. It is observed that propagating modes and also modes that are well below cutoff follow this same behaviour. However, modes that are close to cutoff exhibit values in between those far from this transition region.