Maximum Working Volume and Minimum Working Frequency Tradeoff in a Reverberation Chamber

Mode stirred reverberation chambers are attractive as test facilities because the electric fields produced in them are statistically uniform over a large volume. The field strengths generated can also be high for only a modest input power. These factors allow testing of representative or actual equipment without the need to rotate the equipment or scan with antennae to obtain worst case illumination. Providing these optimum test conditions for a given system configuration will allow the results to be interpreted with confidence. Usually standard guidelines for mode stirred chamber operation involve estimating the minimum working frequency based on a mode density calculation or using measurements to calculate the field uniformity of a given working volume. This paper uses the transmission line matrix technique to investigate the relationship between the minimum working frequency (i.e., the lowest usable frequency) and the maximum working volume. The paper presents a straightforward test to determine this tradeoff and illustrates the exploitation in the analysis of stirrer design options.