Source power distribution for multipath environment using near field circular array beamformer

The authors present a measurement system comprising a synthetic circular array which can be used for imaging the distribution of multipath sources. The array is realised using an antenna mounted on a radial arm which is rotated using a computer-controlled servo. A two-port network analyser samples the channel transfer function between a fixed (base station) antenna and the mobile antenna on the radial arm. The equations for the imaging are presented and an example is given for an indoor environment. As a result, the authors demonstrate how the coarse structure of the fading signal in a complex environment can be modelled with just a few sources