Robotic Radiation Pattern Measurement System for 6–110 GHz Based in Both Near Field and Far Field

Abstract

A robotic measurement system to characterize antennas in the 6–110 GHz range via both near-field (NF) transformation techniques and far-field (FF) measurements is proposed. Typical measurement systems are not able to adjust distance between the antenna under test (AUT) and standard gain antenna, or can only measure either the NF or FF. To implement a feature-complete system, a robot arm with a repeatability of 0.01 mm is used alongside automated control and data transformation techniques. To demonstrate the capability of the system, we compare the manufacturer data of a 75–110 GHz standard gain horn antenna to both FF measurement data as well as transformed planar NF data. Although the system is still limited in the angle span of certain movements, this can be fixed by adjusting the position of the robot as well as the AUT. The existing data for both the transformed NF as well as measured FF correlate well with data from the manufacturer, indicating the accuracy of the proposed system.