Examination of the effectiveness of far-field mathematical absorber reflection suppression in a CATR through computational electromagnetic simulation

Abstract

For a little over a decade now, a measurement and post-processing technique named Mathematical Absorber Reflection Suppression (MARS) has been used successfully to identify and then suppress range multi-path effects in spherical [1, 2, 3, 4], cylindrical [5, 6, 7] & planar [8, 9] near-field antenna measurement systems and far-field [10] and compact antenna test ranges [11] with a detailed theoretical treatment being presented in [12]. Much of this early work concentrated on verification by empirical testing however some corroboration was obtained with the use of computational electromagnetic simulations that considered far-field [13] and subsequently near-field cases [14]. The recent development of a highly accurate computational electromagnetic simulation tool that permits the simulation of “measured” far-field pattern data as obtained from using a compact antenna test range (CATR) [15] has for the first time permitted the careful verification of the far-field MARS technique for a given AUT and CATR combination. For the first time, this paper presents simulated “measured” far-field pattern data in the presence of a large scatterer and then verifies the successful extraction of the scattering artefacts using standard FF-MARS processing. Results are presented and discussed.