The first version of CHAMP
TICRA’s involvement in rotationally symmetric horn antennas was initiated in 1984 with promotion of the first antenna measurement with dual polarised probes developed at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU).
The horn analysis was conducted using the rotational symmetric MOM ROTX software, also obtained from DTU, and verification and calibrations were made in cooperation with the DTU-ESA Spherical Near-Field Antenna Test Facility.
In the following years, the software was further developed by TICRA into the batch-processing package ROT2X and a long series of probes were designed and manufactured for major customers worldwide, including Hughes, Ericsson, and Lockheed Martin. The software was also used in a number of projects for analysing various horn antennas.
In 1988, TICRA initiated a cooperation with E. Kühn to market his mode matching software, which drastically reduced the analysis time for the interior of rotationally symmetric horn antennas as compared to ROT2X. In the following years, Kühn’s software underwent a comprehensive development and modernisation, which resulted in an advanced, versatile and user-friendly software package named CHAMP: Conical Horn Analysis by Modal Processing.
The software was initially used in-house for probe design and various consultancy projects and from 1990 it was sold to many customers worldwide. The original version was still for batch processing. In 2007 the first GUI-version was made and in 2009 optimization was introduced. A complete new and efficient BoR-MoM engine, based on higher-order basis functions, replaced the original MoM solver in 2012. This resulted in a substantial reduction of the horn exterior analysis time. In 2019 the first version of CHAMP 3D was released, along with the TICRA Tools Software Framework. CHAMP 3D allows analysis and design of general, passive multiport components and complex feed chains.
