Proposal for a novel near-field antenna measurement technique employing a conic frustum geometry

Abstract

A technique for the prediction of far-field antenna patterns from data obtained from modified plane-polar near- field measurement system is proposed. This technique utilises a simple change in facility alignment to enable near-field data to be taken over the surface of a conceptual right conic frustum. In this way, existing planar facilities can be modified so that they are able to characterise the wide angle antenna performance in situations where hitherto they would have been limited by truncation. Furthermore, this system offers a cost effective solution to the characterisation of a class of antenna that currently can only be effectively served with spherical near-field scanning. This paper presents the measurement technique, proposes the probe corrected transformation algorithm and presents preliminary results before outlining the future work.