Fully Probe-Corrected Near-Field Far-Field Transformation Employing Plane Wave Expansion and Diagonal Translation Operators

Near-field antenna measurements combined with a near-field far-field transformation are an established antenna characterization technique. The approach avoids far-field measurements and offers a wide area of post-processing possibilities including radiation pattern determination and diagnostic methods. In this paper, a near-field far-field transformation algorithm employing plane wave expansion is presented and applied to the case of spherical near-field measurements. Compared to existing algorithms, this approach exploits the benefits of diagonalized translation operators, known from fast multipole methods. Due to the plane wave based field representation, a probe correction, using directly the probe's far-field pattern can easily be integrated into the transformation. Hence, it is possible to perform a full probe correction for arbitrary field probes with almost no additional effort. In contrast to other plane wave techniques, like holographic projections, which are suitable for highly directive antennas, the presented approach is applicable for arbitrary radiating structures. Major advantages are low computational effort with respect to the coupling matrix elements owing to the use of diagonalized translation operators and the efficient correction of arbitrary field probes. Also, irregular measurement grids can be handled with little additional effort.     

Studies on Fast Algorithm for the Scattering of a Large Array of Waveguide-Fed Wide-Slot Antennas in Millimeter Wave Region

We present an effective numerical technique to characterize the scattering of wide-slot antennas fed by waveguides with arbitrary terminations in terms of the method of moment (MoM) and the mixed potential integral equation (MPIE). In particular, the precorrected-fast Fourier transform (P-FFT) eliminates the need to generate and store the usual square impedance matrix andthus leads to speed up the matrix-vector multiplication in the resultant system. This property makes the Rao-Wilton-Glisson (RWG) functions to be useful in simulating electrically large-scale problems. In addition, the scattering from the finite ground surfaces is accounted for in the total scattered field by using the method of equivalent edge currents. The numerical results are presented and compared with both the traditional method of moment results obtained using the entire-domain basis functions and the experimental results, to demonstrate the proposed method to be a good candidate for study on the scattering of arbitrary wide-slot large array.