Experimental validation of a phaseless, non-redundant plane-polar antenna characterization

Owing to the increasing interest in high frequencies, as the millimeter wave range, wherein accurate phase measurements are increasingly difficult and expensive, phaseless near-field techniques are prime candidates for antenna characterization. In this paper, an experimental validation of a phaseless near-field-far-field (NF -FF) transformation with plane-polar scanning for antenna characterization is presented. A proper representation of problem unknowns and data, using the available information on the antenna under test (AUT) and on the scanning geometry, is adopted in order to improve the reliability and the accuracy of the proposed characterization algorithm. By exploiting the nonredundant sampling representations of electromagnetic fields and by using an oblate spheroid to model the AUT, a remarkable reduction (about 90%) of the required NF samples is achieved. Experimental results on data acquired at the University of Salerno Antenna Characterization Lab are reported to validate experimentally the effectiveness of the proposed characterization technique.