Recent progress in the plane wave synthesis technique for antenna near-field/far-field transformation

A technique recently proposed by Bennett and Schoessow (1978) for the prediction of the far-field radiation pattern of an antenna from measurements taken in the near-field involves the use of aperture synthesis to obtain the plane wave (i.e. far-field) response of an antenna. The approach to date has been largely scalar in nature and has made use of a number of two-dimensional approximations to simplify the data processing task. The present paper reviews briefly the previous work and provides an account of more recent progress including the extension of the method to the consideration of the full vector nature of the problem and also the incorporation of probe compensation.