Efficient and Accurate Measurement of Absorption Cross Section of a Lossy Object in Reverberation Chamber Using Two One-Antenna Methods.

The averaged absorption cross section of a lossy object can be measured in a reverberation chamber (RC). Conventionally, the measurement is conducted in the frequency domain and it requires two antennas with known efficiency. In this paper, the two one-antenna methods are presented—one is in the frequency domain and the other is in the time domain. In the frequency domain, by using the enhanced backscatter effect, the measurement setup is greatly simplified and only one antenna with known efficiency is required. In the time domain, the measurement can be conducted rapidly and accurately using just one antenna and the source stir technique by considering the robustness of the chamber decay time; moreover, the RC can be replaced by a suitable electrically large conducting cavity, which will greatly reduce the hardware requirement. It is found that the time-domain approach is superior to the frequency-domain approach in many aspects. The new measurement methods are efficient and accurate, while the system requirements and setup are simpler than the conventional ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]