A bipolar planar near-field measurement system for compact millimeter-wave antenna arrays

Small millimeter-wave antenna designs present particular difficulties when measured. With most available antenna chambers and ranges originally designed for larger size and lower frequencies, physically smaller antennas are dwarfed by the large support structures and cannot be efficiently characterized. Modification of these existing ranges for small antennas and high frequencies may prove to be very difficult as large positional and RF equipment are not easily modified or replaced. Additionally, equipments associated with millimeter-wave antenna measurements such as vector network analyzers, high frequency cable, and adapters, are typically very expensive and often exceed the cost of the rest of the system. With such difficulties, a custom antenna range, designed for the smaller size antennas operating at millimeter-wave frequencies is an attractive and cost-effective solution. In this presentation, a novel portable millimeter-wave bipolar planar near-field antenna measurement system is introduced.