Free open-source PO/PTD tool for dual-reflector antennas (GNU Octave/MATLAB)
Hi everyone,
I’d like to share the Dual Reflector Designer, a free and open-source beta tool for the design and analysis of axisymmetric dual-reflector antennas.
It currently supports:
• Cassegrain, Gregorian and ring-focus configurations
• Reflector design and ray tracing
• Physical Optics (PO) and PTD edge diffraction
• Automated convergence testing
• Far-field pattern visualization
• Parallel CPU computing and GPU acceleration
It runs on Windows with GNU Octave, so no MATLAB license is required. MATLAB is supported as well. For most users, the recommended way to get started is the provided Windows installer.
The video shows selected Cassegrain benchmark cases compared with TICRA GRASP 24.0 Student Edition. In these particular tests, the resulting patterns agreed closely, while speedups of up to 135x were measured under the tested settings. This is an independent, non-commercial comparison and not a general claim about the full commercial GRASP product.
An unusual aspect of the project is its development process: I defined the requirements, tested and benchmarked the software, and reviewed the results, while Codex with GPT-5.6 Sol generated the implementation. I did not manually write the source code.
It’s still a beta and I’m continuing to improve it, so let me know what you think.
Here is the GitHub Link.