Near-field far-field transformation in echoic measurement environments employing scattering center representations

The radiation behavior of an antenna can be efficiently characterized by near-field measurement and transformation techniques. The achievable accuracy is comparable to direct far-field measurements as long as the near-field data can be probed without any major distortions like reflected or diffracted signal components. In this paper a scattering center representation of echoic measurement environments is presented. This allows to reduce multipath propagation effects directly within the transformation algorithm and to retrieve the undisturbed probe output voltages. The scattering center representation of echoic environments is particularly suited for a recently presented low complexity near-field transformation algorithm utilizing plane waves as equivalent sources.