Antenna-environment multiple scattering in reverberation chamber measurements

Abstract

High-resolution synthetic aperture measurements in a reverberation chamber revealed the presence of multiple scattering between the scan antenna and the measurement environment. Casting the scan antenna-environment multiple scattering as an error term with respect to a fictitious non-scattering scan antenna led to a quantitative and measurable lower bound on the scan antenna-environment interactions. Numerical simulations of this lower bound for infinitesimal dipoles in a rectangular cavity indicated that the actual measurement error was likely to be much greater than this lower bound. In this case, antenna-environment multiple scattering effects were found to be non-negligible. Future work will investigate techniques for mitigating this multiple scattering to enable accurate synthetic aperture-based angle-of-arrival measurements in reverberation chambers.