Numerical Investigations on Phase Recovery from Phaseless Spherical Near-Field Antenna Measurements with Probe-Based Masks

Phaseless spherical near-field antenna measurements tackle the challenge of deriving complex coefficients representing the radiation characteristics of an antenna under test (AUT) based on amplitude-only near-field measurements. These complex coefficients can subsequently be used to determine the AUT's far-field behavior. In this article, we address the application of probe-based masks, which have been introduced within the scope of random masks. Random masks lean on the concept of diffraction patterns, which is well-known in Mathematics. In this work, we first establish the equivalence of probe-based masks to the general definition of masks. Secondly, implementations of probe-based masks and adapted masks are shown. For this, practical patch arrays with two different numbers of elements are used, and multiple probes are generated by varying the element's excitation.