Multipath-Enhanced Measurement of Antenna Patterns: Theory

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel antenna measurement method that leverages multipath propagation instead of minimizing it, enabling accurate pattern measurement without requiring anechoic chambers, thus simplifying the process.

Contribution

The paper proposes the MEAP measurement technique that uses multipath propagation and spherical harmonics for efficient antenna pattern measurement, eliminating the need for anechoic environments.

Findings

Mathematical formulation of the MEAP method

Numerical simulations demonstrating the approach

Potential for practical antenna measurements without anechoic chambers

Abstract

Traditional antenna pattern measurements involve minimizing the impact of multipath propagation in the measurement environment. In contrast, this work introduces a measurement approach that uses rather than mitigates multipath propagation. This is referred to as the Multipath-Enhanced Antenna Pattern (MEAP) Measurement technique. In this respect the approach has some kinship with Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) systems. The advantage in the case of MIMO systems is increased capacity; in the MEAP approach the advantage is elimination of the need for creating an anechoic environment. The approach uses measurements with reference antennas to calibrate the multipath channel matrix, and vector spherical harmonics for efficient pattern representation. After presenting the mathematical details of the method, numerical calculations illustrating the approach are presented. Experimental results are described in a companion paper.