The plane wave synthesis technique for antenna near-field/far-field transformation - Further development

The developments that have occurred in processing for plane-wave synthesis since the study by Schoessow (1980) are presented. In addition, various aspects of prediction accuracy are discussed, including the frequency tolerance and a simple method of determining the order of likely errors. The example presented here in discussing frequency tolerance is of a 50-cm diameter plane wave synthesized by a weighting function at a measurement radius of 1.0 m and with a design frequency of 10.0 GHz. The possibility of obtaining an indication of the effective far-field source distribution by performing a Fourier transformation on the synthesized plane wave is demonstrated. Plane-wave synthesis is seen as having established itself as an effective tool for near-field/far-field transformation in the full three-dimensional form.