Comparison of cylindrical and spherical Mathematical Absorber Reflection Suppression

Reflections in antenna test ranges can often constitute the largest single term within the error budget of a given facility. For some time, a frequency domain measurement and postprocessing technique named Mathematical Absorber Reflection Suppression (MARS) has been successfully used to reduce range multi-path effects within spherical near-field and far-field antenna measurement systems. More recently, a related technique has been developed for use with cylindrical near-field antenna measurement systems. This paper provides an introduction to the measurement techniques and a description of the novel near-field to far-field transform algorithms before presenting preliminary results of actual range measurements of a low gain antenna taken using a combination spherical / cylindrical system that was installed within a partially anechoic chamber. These results illustrate the success of the techniques which are found to provide comparable improvements yielding far-field patterns that are in encouraging agreement despite every step within the data acquisition, transformation and postprocessing chain being different thereby providing further compelling evidence of the success of the MARS technique.