The paper defines the border between the far and near field zone of printed
antenna arrays. The conventional definition has a limited application in side
lobe suppression measurements, especially in the case of high side lobe
suppression. The paper particularly details the printed antenna array with 8
radiation elements. Its symmetrical tapered feed network with Chebyshev
distribution enables side lobe suppression greater than -44 dB in the
E-plane. In addition, the influence of tolerances in the standard
photolithographic process has been investigated. The expected tolerances in
the standard photolithographic process have been assumed with moderate
precision in order to estimate the side lobe suppression degradation due to
amplitude and phase deviations, as well as deviations to optimized values in
radiating element positioning.