Theoretical study of angular distribution of plane waves in a small reverberation chamber for simulating multipath environment and testing mobile phones

A rectangular metallic cavity is known to support a number of resonant cavity modes. Each of these modes can be described as being a sum of 8 plane waves inclined at different angles. We study how these plane waves are angularly distributed in space. The results show that the angular distribution is uniform in space independent of chamber size, provided the chamber has nearly-cubic shape and is sufficiently large. As an example, a rectangular cavity with dimensions 1 m /spl times/ 0.8 m /spl times/ 1 m is analysed in detail at 870-970 MHz.