Error analysis and simulator in cylindrical near field antenna measurement systems

This paper presents an error estimator to analyze the most important errors in one cylindrical near field measurement system and the effect of these errors in the calculation of the far field radiation pattern. This study has been performed to improve the design or a cylindrical near field system for L-band RADAR antennas and to evaluate the error budget of the measurement of those antennas. The Antenna under test (AUT) is modeled with an array of vertical dipoles, and the simulator performs a number of virtual acquisitions with random or deterministic errors in order to evaluate the effect of each source of error in the electrical measured parameter. The results achieved are the variation in the main parameters of the antenna: directivity, side lobe level, beam width and beam pointing. This paper describes the source of errors considered, the error simulator implemented, and some results for the L-band RADAR antennas in a 17 meters (vertical dimension) cylindrical near field system. The paper established the methodology implemented for the analysis of the source of errors shown in (S. Burgos et.al., 2006).