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A robotic near-field antenna measurement system allowing for acquisition over non-canonical measurement surfaces is presented. The robot consists of a six-axis robotic arm and a seventh axis rotary positioner and the created acquisition surface is parametrically reconfigurable. The near-field to far-field transformation required is also described. The success of the technique is demonstrated through measured results, compared to canonical measurement data.
This paper introduces the new Portable Laser Guided Robotic Metrology (PLGRM) system at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Glenn Research Center. Previous work used industrial robots in fixed facilities to characterize antennas and required fixtures that do not lend themselves to portable applications. NASA's PLGRM system is designed for in-situ antenna measurements at a remote site. The system consists of a collaborative robot arm mounted on a vertical lift and a laser tracker, each on a mobile base. Together, they enable scanning a surface larger than the robot's reach. To accomplish this, the robot first collects all points within its reach, then the system is moved and the laser tracker is used to relocate the robot before additional points are captured. The PLGRM implementation will be discussed including how safety and planning are combined to effectively characterize antennas. Software defined triggering is a feature, for flexible integration of vector network analyzers and antenna controllers. Lastly, data will be shown to demonstrate system functionality and accuracy.
The Three-antenna polarization measurement technique is used to determine the axial ratio, tilt angle and sense of polarization of three antennas from measurements on each of three antenna pairs. The three antennas are generally nominally linearly polarized and the measurement data consists of the change in amplitude from the initial antenna orientation where they are co-polarized to the orientation where one of the antennas is rotated about its axis to the null amplitude position. The sign of the phase change is also noted and the phase change at the null position is known from theoretical calculations to be either plus or minus 90 degrees. The correct sign is determined from the sign of the phase change. For antennas with axial ratios in the range of 50 to 80 dB that will be used as near-field probes or as feeds for reflector antennas, it is imperative to measure the polarization parameters as accurately as possible. The primary source of uncertainty in the measurement is due to scattered signals in the measurement range that arise from multiple reflections between the two antennas and from the absorber on the chamber walls. For antennas with very large axial ratios, the scattered signals can be larger than the true measurement signal. These scattered signals can change the sign of the phase and produce large errors in the amplitude at the null. If the separation distance between the antennas is adjusted after rotating to the null to produce a maximum amplitude, the scattered signal is in phase with the true measurement signal. If the distance is adjusted for the minimum at the null, the scattered and true signals are out of phase. Measurements at these two positions will produce the best measurement of the phase sign and the true amplitude. But if measurements are being performed at a number of frequencies, the maximum and minimum amplitude positions will be different for each frequency, and this will complicate automated multifrequency measurements. New improvements have been developed in the details of the measurements that greatly improve the determination of the phase sign and the amplitude at the null for multiple frequency measurements and these will be described and illustrated in the following paper. With these improvements, the estimated uncertainty of a 60 dB axial ratio is on the order of 1.8 dB. A new technique has also been developed to improve the source correction of the pattern data for probes with large axial ratios that guarantees that the on-axis polarization of the pattern data will be identical to the results of the Three-antenna measurement. The probe correction processing will then produce the highest accuracy results for the polarization of the AUT.
A dual linear polarized 3D printed magneto-electric phased array antenna for various 5G New Radio (NR) frequency bands is proposed and its beam steering performance is investigated. The magneto-electric radiating element exhibits a well-defined stable pattern quality, low variation in the impedance over a wider bandwidth and high port to port isolation in a dual polarization configuration. The analog beamforming network (BFN) of the array is also designed. The fabricated board will be combined with the 3D printed array aperture for experimental verification of the scan performance.
There are certain applications where the use of electro-optical (EO) probes to acquire near-field measurements can provide major advantages as compared to conventional RF measurement techniques. One such application is in the area of high power RF measurements that are required for calibration and test of active electronically scanned arrays (AESA). The family of EO probes presented herein utilizes the Pockels effect to measure the time-varying electric fields of the antenna under test (AUT). The use of a non-invasive, broadband EO probe facilitates measurement of the tangential electric field components very close to the AUT aperture in the reactive near-field region. This close proximity between the AUT and the measurement probe is not possible with conventional metallic probes. In this paper, the far field gain patterns acquired using the EO probe will be compared to the corresponding gain patterns obtained from conventional far-field and near-field methods. The measurement results, along with the advantages and disadvantages of the EO system configuration, will be presented.
Radar scattering is typically represented as the RCS of the test object. The term RCS evolved from the basic metric for radar scattering: the ratio of the power scattered from an object in units of power per solid angle (steradians) normalized to the plane-wave illumination in units of power per unit area. The RCS is thus given in units of area (or effective cross-sectional area of the target, hence the name). Note that the RCS of the test object is a property of the test object alone; it is neither a function of the radar system nor the distance between the radar and the test object, if the object is in the far field. Because the RCS of a target can have large amplitude variation in frequency and angle, it is expressed in units of decibels with respect to a square meter and is abbreviated as dBsm (sometimes DBSM or dBm2). In terms of this definition, the RCS of a radar target is a scalar ratio of powers. If the effects of polarization and phase are included, the scattering can be expressed as a complex polarimetric scattering (CPS) matrix. The measurement of the RCS of a test object requires the test object to be illuminated by an electromagnetic plane wave and the resultant scattered signal to be observed in the far field. After calibration, this process yields the RCS of the test object in units of area, or the full scattering matrix as a set of complex scattering coefficients. This paper describes the planned upgrades to the old IEEE Std 1502™-2007 IEEE Recommended Practice for Radar Cross-Section Test Procedures [1]. The new standard will reflect the recent improvements in numerical tools, measurement technology and uncertainty estimates in the past decade.
This paper presents a technique for reduction the acquisition time in the measurement of antennas in spherical near field systems using multifrequency on-the-fly acquisitions. When these acquisitions are performed, a shift in the pattern is performed. This shift appears in polarization when the scan is in roll axis, or in pointing direction when the scan is azimuth or elevation axis. In any case, this shift has to be corrected in order to compensate the different trigger time for each frequency point. This paper presents a technique for compensating this rotation in spherical near field system, by rotation of the radiation pattern in the scan axis through an easy calculation of the that shift.
Full probe compensation techniques for Spherical Near Field (SNF) measurements have recently been proposed [1-5]. With such techniques, even antennas with more than decade bandwidth are suitable probes in most systems. The abolition of otherwise frequent probe changes during multi-service campaigns is a highly desirable feature for modern measurement applications such as automotive. In this paper, a standard dual-ridge horn with 15:1 bandwidth is investigated experimentally as probe in a SNF automotive range. The accuracy of the probe compensation technique is validated by comparison to standard single probe measurement.
Spherical near-field measurements are regarded as the most accurate technique for the characterization of an Antenna Under Tests (AUT) radiation. The AUT's far-field radiation characteristics can be calculated from the Spherical Mode Coefficients (SMC), or spherical wave coefficients, determined from near-field data. The disadvantage of this technique is that, for the calculation of the SMC, a whole sphere containing the AUT must be Nyquist-sampled, thus directly implying a longer measurement time when only a few cuts are of interest. Due to antennas being spatially band-limited, they can be described with a finite number of SMC. Besides, the vector containing the SMC can be proved sparse under certain circumstances, e.g., if the AUT's radiation pattern presents information redundancy, such as an electrical symmetry with respect to coordinate system of the measurement. In this paper, a novel sampling strategy is proposed and is combined with compressed-sensing techniques, such as basis pursuit solvers, to retrieve the sparse SMC. The retrieved sparse SMC are then used to obtain the AUT's far-field radiation. The resulting far-field pattern is compared for both simulated and measured data. The reduced number of points needed for the presented sampling scheme is compared with classical equiangular sampling, together with the estimated acquisition time. The proposed sampling scheme improves the acquisition time with a reasonable error.
An experimental case of spherical probe-corrected phaseless near-field measurements with the two-scans technique is presented, based on magnitude measurements at two surfaces of the VAST12 reflector antenna performed at the DTU-ESA Facility. Phase retrieval using strictly the directly measured near-field magnitude was unfeasible in this setup, due to the small sphere separation allowed by the probe positioner, which led to incorrect and excessively slow convergence. Phase retrieval with larger separation between spheres has shown remarkable results. For these tests a measured magnitude was used in combination with calculated near-field magnitudes at different (larger and smaller) spheres with larger separations than allowed by the experimental setup. It has been seen that larger separation between measurement spheres improves accuracy of phase retrieval. A measurement with a backprojected measurement with 3 m sphere separation is of particular interest because it can be potentially replicated in the DTU-ESA Facility assuming such range of movement was allowed, while being accurate down to an error of less than-35dB. Measurements with larger spheres show even better accuracy. These good results were obtained with the normal spatial sampling rate for complex measurements and with a very simple Hertzian dipole initial guess, and show the superior performance of spherical phaseless measurements with the two-scans technique, compared to a planar setup.
Measurement scenarios for 5G mobile communications are nowadays challenging the industry to define suitable turn-key solutions that allow Over the Air (OTA) testing of non-connectorized devices. In order to respond to the needs of an effective measurement solution, that allow measuring all the required OTA parameters at both sub6GHz and mm-Wave frequencies and that could be deployed in a very short time, the Compact Antenna Test Range (CATR) was chosen. In this paper, we will summarize the performance and the testing capabilities of a short focal-length, corner-fed CATR design, providing a 1.5 m x 1.5 m cylindrical Quiet Zone, operating from 1.7 GHz to 40 GHz and upgradeable to 110 GHz, allowing OTA measurements of Active Antenna System (AAS) Base Stations (BS), installed at Ericsson premises in Gothenburg, Sweden in 2017.
In this contribution the signal received by an antenna is understood as an inner product built by the polarization vectors of the involved antennas. By using a suitable unitary transformation the polarization efficiency can be straightforwardly calculated without additional assumptions. By solving an eigenvalue problem given by a unitary operator which represents a rotation, a simple and illustrative interpretation is possible. The formulation is applied to derive the well-known relations of the improved three antenna polarization measurement technique given by Allen C. Newell, which is mainly based on the measurement of relative power levels. Some measurement results and the calculation of the achievable measurement accuracy are presented.
Radar data on the complete polarimetric responses from a 4" dihedral corner reflector from 4 to 18 GHz have been collected and studied. As a function of the azimuth, the vertically suspended object may present itself to the radar as a dihedral, a flat plate, an edge, a wedge, or combinations of these. A two-dimensional method-of-moment (2-D MOM) code is used to model the perfectly electrical conducting (PEC) body, which allows us to closely simulate the radar responses and to provide insight for the data interpretation. Of particular interest are the frequency and angular dependences of the responses which yield information about the downrange separation of the dominant scattering centers, as well as their respective odd-or even-bounce nature. Use of the corner reflector as a calibration target is discussed.
Specular reflectance data of indoor interior materials is a prerequisite to analysis of the channel characteristics for new millimeter and submillimeter indoor wireless communications. Antenna property such as gain and radiation pattern is one of the key measurement quantities in electromagnetic wave metrology. This paper describes a specular reflectance and antenna property measurement system and shows measurement results of the specular reflectance of an Acetal plate and the antenna property of a 24 dB horn antenna in 325-500 GHz frequency range.
In order to support near-field measurements of automobile antennas in as realistic as possible environments, an equivalent sources based near-field far-field transformation approach for near-field measurements above a possibly lossy dielectric half-space is presented and evaluated. Different possibilities for considering the half-space influence are discussed, where an approach with an appropriate half-space Green's function is found to be most accurate, as expected. The formulation of the equivalent sources transformation approach with the half-space Green's function and a formulation with free-space Green's function together with equivalent sources representation of the half-space influence are discussed and a variety of results are presented in order to corroborate the feasibility of the various approaches.
Non-destructive testing (NDT) is a fundamental step in the production chain of aircraft structural components since it can save both money and time in product evaluation and troubleshooting. This paper presents a reflection-based imaging technique for electromagnetic (EM) testing of composite panels, with the device under test (DUT) being metal backed and both the transmitting and receiving components of the NDT system situated on the same side of the DUT. One of the key properties of the presented technique is the complete redundancy of a reference measurement, thereby making it feasible to retrieve a high quality image of the DUT with only a single measurement. Data for both a proof-of-concept DUT and an industrially manufactured composite panel is provided, and the retrieved images show the applicability of both the measurement technique and the imaging algorithms.
The Plane Wave Generator (PWG) is an array of elements with suitably optimized complex coefficients, generating a plane wave in the close proximity of the array. Thus, the PWG achieve far-field testing conditions in a Quiet Zone (QZ) at a reduced distance in a manner similar to what is achieved in a Compact Antenna Test Range (CATR) [1]. In this paper, the concept of a high performance, dual polarized PWG supporting up to 10:1 bandwidth is presented for the first time. A prototype of a dual polarized PWG has been designed, manufactured and tested in the 600MHz to 6GHz frequency range. The initial testing results on QZ uniformity and evaluation of possible measurement accuracy are presented.
The unknown-thru calibration technique is being used to achieve a system level calibration at millimeter wave frequencies (>50 GHz) on the robotic ranges at NIST. This two-port calibration requires the use of a full bi-directional measurement, instead of a traditional single-direction antenna measurement. We explored the value of the additional data acquired. We find that we can use this information to verify antenna/scan alignment, image the scattering from the positioner/facility, and perform a first order correction to the transmission data for uncertainties due to LO cable flexure.
In this paper, we explore the capabilities of the Monostatic-Bistatic Theorem (MBT) applied to Radar Cross Section (RCS) in low frequency. Originally, the validity of this theorem has been shown in high frequency for targets whose RCS is produced by elementary interactions (specular reflection in particular). We are interested in aerial platforms and in particular some Low Observable targets that have relatively "pure" geometries limiting the presence of complex interactions. Several variants of the MBT from the field of electromagnetism [1][2][3] and acoustics [4] are used. Their performances are compared from data obtained from a MoM method that is recognized to produce accurate scattering data. To highlight the discrepancies produced by the different variants, we use both a metric to compare the quality of the bistatic holograms obtained and also radar imaging which allows locating the areas of the target where the echoes are not correctly restored.
We present on an all-optical spatial metrology system , the PiCMM, that aids in the alignment and tracking of antennas with accuracies on the order of 25 microns and 0.01 deg. This system speeds up millimeter-wave antenna alignment, does not require contact, and links spatial measurements to a laser tracker world coordinate frame. An automated Pixel Probe and dark-field imaging are used to directly measure the aperture geometry and its pose. These measurements are absolute in the world-frame of a laser tracker and associated coordinate metrol-ogy space of the antenna scanner. Thus, aperture geometries can be linked directly to any laser tracker target (i.e. 6DOF, 3DOF) and data such as that used to calibrate positioner kinematics. For example, the links and joints defining the Denavit-Hartenberg kinematic model of a robotic arm scanner. The new automated aspect of the system reduces alignment time to under an hour. The synergy with laser tracker targets allows for a high level of repeatability. Furthermore, antennas can be exchanged or realigned in the antenna scanner autonomously because antenna geometry and kinematic models reside in the same laser tracker coordinate metrology space.