The effect of receiving antenna orientation and polarization on measurements of antenna efficiency in a reverberation chamber

Abstract

This paper presents a study into the effect of receiving antenna orientation and polarization on the measurement of antenna efficiency for electrically small antennas (ESAs) in a reverberation chamber (RC). Throughout the measurements, the same transmitting antenna was used whereas the receiving antenna was either the antenna under test (AUT) or a reference antenna (REF) of known efficiency. A source polarization stirring technique was employed and a series of measurements were made for various combinations of AUT and REF antenna orientations and polarizations. The obtained radiation efficiency results are compared. The AUT used for this study was an electrically small dielectric resonator antenna (DRA). The results show that differences in measured efficiency of up to 2 dB (i.e. 40%) can arise due to different AUT and REF orientations and polarizations.