Application of Improving the Efficiency of Antenna Far‐Field Measurement Based on Fourier Interpolation Method

ABSTRACT Antenna directional pattern measurements can be generally categorized into near‐field and far‐field measurements. The measurement algorithm designed in this paper is based on the use of Fourier interpolation of band‐limited periodic functions under far‐field conditions to achieve accurate and fast measurements. The antenna far‐field measurement process is generally required to be both accurate and fast, in order to measure accurately, the denser the scanning sampling cutting plane is, the better (the sampling interval for far‐field measurement is usually less than 0.1 of the Half Power Beam Width). However, with the development of antenna arrays, there are more and more large aperture phased scanning arrays, and these antennas with narrower half power beam width (HPBW) are sampled very much in 360° scanning range in order to measure accurate pattern in far‐field measurement, which obviously reduces the measurement efficiency of the antenna. However, the algorithm proposed in this paper is able to realize the sampling interval as the order of magnitude of HPBW on the basis of Fourier interpolation, which can not only realize the accurate measurement of far‐field pattern but also greatly save the measurement time and improve the measurement efficiency. In the paper, several antennas are utilized to prove the feasibility of the algorithm, which shows that the proposed algorithm can not only accurately realize the measurement of the far‐field of the directional pattern but also improve the efficiency of the measurement.