Antenna Far-Field Assessment From Near-Field Measured Over Arbitrary Surfaces

Abstract

A matrix method is developed to calculate the antennas radiation pattern from near-field data measured over arbitrary surfaces. The principle of the matrix method is to determine the modal expansion coefficients by solving a system of linear equations. The number of required measured samples is deduced from the number of modes considering the cylindrical or the spherical wave expansion of antenna radiated fields. Once the modal coefficients are known, the far field of the antenna under test (AUT) is obtained. The matrix method has been implemented, and its potentialities are evaluated using two specific arbitrary surfaces (square section cylinder surrounding the AUT and a closed cylinder). Numerical (dipoles array) and experimental (base station antenna) results are provided to illustrate the efficiency and the stability of the proposed method.