Antenna Radiation Pattern Measurements in Reverberation Chamber

Published

November 3, 2018

Author(s)

Audrey K. Puls

Abstract

Antenna radiation pattern measurements are typically performed in anechoic chambers which are expensive to buy and inconvenient to rent from external facilities. This paper investigates the use of a reverberation chamber for antenna radiation pattern measurements due to its significant cost reduction compared to anechoic environments. Unlike other proposed methods which involve complex and time-consuming post processing, our method utilizes averaging of paddle measurements to replicate anechoic results. This paper discusses both a correlation experiment, to determine how many degrees the reverberation paddle must rotate to create an uncorrelated measurement, and a radiation pattern measurement. Two horn antennas are used in all cases operating between 1 GHz and 18 GHz. Good agreement is found between our measurements taken in a reverberation chamber, and those taken by the manufacturer of the antenna in an anechoic chamber. We find that the main lobe radiation pattern of a given antenna can be estimated with more certainty than the back-lobe radiation using a reverberation chamber. The goal is that this simple and cost-effective process can be used to determine radiation patterns from embedded antennas with unknown patterns, such as those within wireless devices.

Conference Dates

November 4-9, 2018

Conference Location

Williamsburg, VA, US

Conference Title

36th Annual Symposium of the Antenna Measurement Techniques Association (AMTA)

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

Anechoic, Correlation, Horn, Paddle, Reverberation Chamber, Standard Deviation of the Mean, Vector Network Analyzer.

Citation

Puls, A. (2018), Antenna Radiation Pattern Measurements in Reverberation Chamber, 36th Annual Symposium of the Antenna Measurement Techniques Association (AMTA), Williamsburg, VA, US, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=926266 (Accessed April 26, 2024)