Single-cut Far-Field Antenna Radiation Pattern Reconstruction Accuracy Analysis in Compact Anechoic Chamber Setup

In production testing, it is of importance to measure the key radiation parameters of an antenna under test (AUT), e.g., main beam peak and direction, sidelobes, and null depth and direction in a cost-effective setup with a short measurement time. As a result, practical measurement setups are often compact and equipped with only a few probes (or probe locations). However, these system limitations would introduce errors for AUT antenna testing. This problem has become even more pronounced for 5G radios due to utilization of large-scale antenna configuration and high frequency bands. Spherical near-field measurements are nowadays an accurate and mature technique for characterizing AUTs, which however, necessitates a full spherical acquisition, leading to a long measurement time. Single-cut near-to-far-field transformation is a promising strategy since most of the key AUT parameters are available in the single-cut pattern and it requires much reduced measurement time. In this work, a simple and flexible scheme is proposed to evaluate errors introduced by limitations in practical setups for single-cut far-field (FF) antenna radiation pattern reconstruction, where the near-field data can be easily generated and modified according to the limitations introduced in practical multi-probe anechoic chamber setups, e.g., measurement distance, truncation range, and sampling interval. The reconstructed FF pattern is obtained using a commercial near-field to far-field transformation tool, SNIFT. The proposed scheme is numerically validated via comparing the reference FF pattern of a 4×8 uniform planar array composed of ideal Hertzian dipoles and reconstructed FF pattern. With the proposed scheme, the impact of practical system limitations on single-cut reconstruction accuracy can be easily analyzed.