Verification of spherical mathematical absorber reflection suppression in a combination spherical near-field and compact antenna test range

This paper presents the results of a recent study concerning the computational electromagnetic simulation of a spherical near-field (SNF) antenna test system in the presence of a compact antenna test range (CATR). The plane-wave scattering matrix approach [1, 2] allows many of the commonly encountered components within the range uncertainty budget, including range reflections, to be included within the model [3]. This paper presents the results of simulations that verify the utility of the spherical mathematical absorber reflection suppression (S-MARS) technique [3, 4] for the identification and subsequent extraction of artifacts resulting from range reflections. Although past verifications have been obtained using experimental techniques this paper, for the first time, corroborates these findings using purely computational methods. The use of MARS is particularly relevant in applications that inherently include scatterers within the test environment. Such cases include instances where a SNF test system is installed within an existing compact antenna test range (CATR) as is the configuration at the recently upgraded Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) Antenna Laboratory [5, 6]. Thus, this study focuses on this installation with results of CEM simulations being presented. The method enables a quantitative measure of the levels of suppression offered by the MARS system.