Plane wave, pattern subtraction, range compensation for spherical surface antenna pattern measurements.

摘要

The plane wave, pattern subtraction (PWPS) algorithm is a new range compensation algorithm for computationally removing the errors introduced by imperfect antenna measurement ranges. Antenna measurement ranges are facilities for measuring antenna parameters. This range compensation technique and algorithm compensates antenna pattern measurements for ranges utilizing spherical antenna positioners and a continuous wave frequency source. Range compensation increases the usefulness of existing ranges by improving the accuracy of measurements of higher performance antennas, which cannot easily be tested with existing outdoor or indoor far-field and compact range technology. Existing range compensation methods have performance limitations in the level of compensation, have cost disadvantages, and/or have a high computational penalty.; The PWPS method reduces the computational complexity below that of the existing compensation algorithms that provide the most thorough compensation by compensating for a selectable number of range imperfections that add the largest errors to the pattern measurement. Probing the range field on the surface of a sphere enclosing the test zone, which is the volume of space in which the antenna under test (AUT) rotates during the pattern measurement, produces information that is used to develop a plane wave model of the range field in the test zone. A computationally fast algorithm is developed for calculating the response of an AUT to plane waves in the range incident from arbitrary directions using iteratively upgraded approximations of the AUT far-field pattern. This allows the error introduced by extraneous sources in the range to be iteratively estimated and subtracted from the measured pattern to obtain a compensated pattern.