Derivation of Far-field Gain Using a Gain Reduction Effect in the Fresnel Region

A handy method of calculating far-field gain based on the magnitude of the power transmission in a Fresnel region is presented, which can be applied to the phaseless near-field measurement. Due to the short range inside an anechoic chamber, the probe antenna is often placed in the Fresnel region of the antenna under test (AUT). It is well-known that far-field gain of an antenna gradually reduces when one antenna moves to the other one placed in a proximity distance. This fact can be advantageously applied to estimate the far-field gain in a far-field region. The proposed method offers rapid estimation of the far-field gain based on the simple input knowledge such as the probe antenna gain and the magnitude of the power transmission and the separation distance between AUT and probe antenna. The proposed method can be applicable to a wide range of microwave antennas. This feature makes it possible to offer preliminary measurement results and reference parameters of the measurement for the various types of microwave antennas.

An UWB Physical Optics Approach for Fresnel-Zone RCS Measurements on a Complex Target at Non-Normal Incidence

In this paper, we propose a fast method for measuring the radar cross section of a complex target at non-normal incidences and Fresnel region antenna-to-target distances. The proposed method relies both on the physical optics approach and on averaging the field distribution over the transmitting and receiving antenna apertures. The ratio between the analytical expression of the radar cross section at far-field and Fresnel region results in a field-zone extrapolation factor. The RCS resulting from the scattering parameters measured at Fresnel region distances is then corrected with that field-zone extrapolation factor. The method is suitable to be used in a perturbed, multipath environment by applying the distance averaging technique, coupling subtraction or time gating. Our technique requires a very simple measuring configuration consisting of two horn antennas and a vector network analyzer. The experimental validation of the proposed technique demonstrates reasonable agreement with simulated radar cross section at non-normal incidence.