Probe-AUT Multiple Reflection Suppression in the Over the Air Measurement of 5G Antennas Using Matrix Pencil Method

Abstract

The effect of probe proximity to the antenna under test (AUT) in the fixed-probe spherical near field (SNF) measurement system is investigated. The matrix pencil method (MPM) is utilized to suppress the undesired multiple reflections between AUT and probe, and the optimal angular region for correction is determined in this scenario. The simulation results are compared with a reference set of data in terms of transmission coefficients and radiation patterns to evaluate the performance of the MPM in the probe-generated echo filtering procedure. To verify the functionality of the MPM in practice, two antennas are exploited as different probes to implement a spherical measurement system in a mini-anechoic chamber, which is developed for conducting the over the air (OTA) measurements of the fifth-generation (5G) antennas. By comparing the radiation pattern results, it is observed that applying the MPM to the sampled data leads to more accurate results in a compact near field (NF) measurement setup.