Measurement setups for millimeter-wave antennas at 60/140/270 GHz bands

Antenna development at millimeter-wave (mmW) bands has many unique challenging issues wherein the measurement is one of the toughest one because of the expensive testing setup, limited system dynamic range, complicated and tedious calibration as well as measurement procedures. Furthermore, cable, connector or probe used in the measurement shows non-ignorable effect on the measurement results of the antenna under test (AUT), which must be considered carefully in the measurement system configuration. In this paper, we present three measurement setups for mmW antennas at 60 GHz, 140 GHz and 270 GHz bands, respectively. The detailed setup configurations are addressed to achieve the maximum system dynamic range with the available commercial accessories. The setups are successfully used to characterize a number of antennas at 60/140/270 GHz bands with different feeding connections (coax, waveguide and probe). The measured radiation patterns show very good agreement with the simulations.