Single-Cut Phaseless Near-Field Measurements for Fast Antenna Testing

Abstract

Single-cut techniques allow for fast antenna characterization by measuring and transforming to far-field individual pattern cuts instead of the full sphere. The cut fields are expanded in a reduced set of cylindrical coefficients, which can be used to accurately compute the far-field in the main pattern cuts for antennas with separable aperture distributions. This communication introduces a fast single-cut near-field to far-field transformation method using amplitude-only data. The technique is based on the measurement of the near-field magnitude in two concentric cuts and starts an iterative propagation process to retrieve their phases. This technique becomes a fast tool for antenna characterization when one is interested in a few cardinal plane cuts of the antenna and only magnitude measurements are available. The proposed single-cut phaseless technique is tested using simulated and measured data, and it shows its potential for fast and more reliable amplitude-only measurements.