Uncertainty in Reverberation-Chamber Antenna-Efficiency Measurements in the Presence of a Phantom

Published

June 1, 2020

Author(s)

Catherine A. Remley, Benjamin F. Jamroz, Laurens A. Bronckers, Anne Roc'h, Bart Smolders

Abstract

In future wireless devices it will become even more critical to test the effect of a user’s proximity on device performance than it is today. In this work, we propose and demonstrate an improved uncertainty estimation method for 5 antenna efficiency measurements in a reverberation chamber. The improved method separately computes uncertainties due to the effects of chamber loading by the phantom and the effects of antenna mismatch introduced by the phantom, illustrating the sensitivity of uncertainty to close-proximity user effects. 10 We demonstrate that, while the impact of the phantom may be significant on antenna efficiency, and, it has some influence on the uncertainty in the measurement, its impact on overall uncertainty may be insignificant. This is demonstrated using the two-antenna method in the presence of a phantom close to the 15 antenna under test. We illustrate the method by summarizing the antenna efficiencies with their uncertainties and the impact of the phantom for important communication bands. Due to the large effect of the user on antenna performance, this type of measurement and its uncertainty evaluation is a valuable way to 20 characterize antenna efficiency including user effects.

Citation

IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation

Pub Type

Journals

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DOI Link

Keywords

Antenna Efficiency Measurements, Human Phantom, Measurement Uncertainty, Reverberation Chambers, User Effects, Wireless System

Citation

Remley, C. , Jamroz, B. , Bronckers, L. , Roc'h, A. and Smolders, B. (2020), Uncertainty in Reverberation-Chamber Antenna-Efficiency Measurements in the Presence of a Phantom, IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, [online], https://doi.org/10.1109/TAP.2020.2969883 (Accessed October 9, 2025)