APPLICATION OF INTERVAL ANALYSIS ON ERROR ANALYSIS OF REFLECTION-ONLY MATERIAL CHARACTERIZATION METHODS

When performing electromagnetic material characterization, an error analysis should be performed to determine the sensitivity of the extracted permittivity and permeability. Traditional error analysis methods such as the error propagation method and Monte Carlo simulations can pose difficulties when analyzing free space material characterization methods. This paper thus shows how interval analysis can be implemented to perform error analysis on free space material characterization methods and provide an alternate means to perform error analysis. Background is presented on interval representations and interval functions, and a procedure for performing error analysis with interval analysis is presented. An error analysis is performed on the free space implementation of the layer-shift method with interval analysis and the subsequent standard deviations computed with interval analysis are compared to standard deviations computed through Monte Carlo simulation.