Parsimonious Angular Sampling for Fast Assessment of Mechanical Stirrer Efficiency

This letter demonstrates that the stirring efficiency of mechanical stirrers in a reverberation chamber (RC) can be determined much more quickly than is currently done. Instead of requiring a uniform stepping of the stirrer over a full turn, it is shown that a strongly reduced number of positions is sufficient, without sacrificing the accuracy of the results. In fact, the overall accuracy is significantly improved, compared to the standard procedure. The proposed method can therefore accurately determine within seconds how changing loading conditions affect the stirring efficiency. This ability is crucial for mode-tuned and mode-stirred RC users for electromagnetic compatibility tests involving lossy equipments under test, as well as for over-the-air tests of wireless communication systems in multipath settings, where absorbing foams are introduced to emulate various propagation scenarios.