Time-Domain Measurement of Antenna Efficiency in Reverberation Chamber

In this communication, we present a new and quick measurement method of antenna efficiency in reverberation chamber. The technique involves the processing of the measured time-domain response of transmit/receive antennas to a short pulse. Thereafter, a large number of multipath taps for an intended frequency and bandwidth are extracted from the channel delay response. Owning to the large delay profile of the channel, overall estimated power of the multipath taps is less variant with the mechanical stirring of cavity modes, i.e., an approximately uniform field throughout much volume of the chamber is obtained. The radiation efficiency of different antennas are measured by the time-domain approach and compared to the traditional method using frequency domain and mechanical stirring. The proposed method has good accuracy even without mechanical stirring of the cavity modes. Consequently, the radiation efficiency of a test antenna can be measured for several frequencies with one single experiment.