Polarization Extraction in Planar Near-Field Phaseless Measurements

Near-field measurements typically require both amplitude and phase information to correctly predict the far-field. Unfortunately, there are situations in which the phase data is not available or impractical to obtain. That is why there has been a need for the development of phaseless techniques. Up until now, a number of remarkable solutions to this problem have been proposed by the researcher in different disciplines. Unfortunately, the complete vectorial representation of the field is not investigated in depth. The evaluated cases are usually linearly polarized and only the dominant polarization is investigated while the cross polarized field is usually neglected. This paper addresses the polarization issue in a two-component approach and then proposes a solution to the problem. A searching mechanism, for the incorporation of an appropriate initial guess, is integrated into the well-known, iterative Fourier technique (plane-to-plane) to enhance the algorithm response. Then, using two sets of measured orthogonal information data gathered by two linearly and orthogonally polarized probes, it is shown that with the aid of only a single point amplitude measurement, the polarization characteristics of the antenna can be extracted up to an inherent ambiguity of the right- and left-handedness. In order to have an assessment of the applicability of the proposed method, both linearly and circularly polarized antennas are simulated. Additionally, the method of extracting the polarization from the phaseless data is also verified through a bi-polar near-field measurement.