Evaluation of software defined radio receiver for phaseless near-field measurements

Abstract

This paper presents a time domain antenna measurement technique by using a low cost software defined radio receiver. The technique aims to resolve measurement challenges derived from antennas where the reference signal is not accessible. The phase reconstruction implemented in this work is based on calculating the Fast Fourier Transform of the time domain signal to estimate the power spectrum and the relative phase between measurement points. In order to do that a reference antenna is used to retrieve the phase, providing a full characterization in amplitude and phase of the electric field and allowing source reconstruction. The results demonstrate the potential of this technique for new antenna measurement systems and reveal some of the limitations of the technique to be optimized, like the undesired reflections due to the interactions between the probe and the reference antenna.