Uncorrelated configurations and field uniformity in reverberation chambers stirred by reconfigurable metasurfaces

Reverberation chambers are currently used to test electromagnetic compatibility as well as to characterize antenna efficiency, wireless devices, and MIMO systems. The related measurements are based on statistical averages and their fluctuations. We introduce a very efficient mode stirring process based on electronically reconfigurable metasurfaces (ERMs). By locally changing the field boundary conditions, the ERMs allow us to generate a humongous number of uncorrelated field realizations even within small reverberation chambers. We fully experimentally characterize this stirring process by determining these uncorrelated realizations via the autocorrelation function of the transmissions. The uniformity criterion parameter _{σ dB} , as defined in the IEC 61000-4-21 standard, is also investigated and reveals the performance of this stirring. The effect of short paths on the two presented quantities is identified. We compare the experimental results on the uniformity criterion parameter with a corresponding model based on random matrix theory and find good agreement, where the only parameter, the modal overlap, is extracted by the quality factor.