UWB antenna characterization

The characterization of UWB antennas is considered with emphasis placed on the determination of compact descriptors appropriate for UWB communications antennas. All of the descriptors can be derived from the antenna transfer function, thus providing a unified approach in which the transfer function is the basis for all of the subsequent computations. It is shown that the unambiguous determination of the antenna transfer function necessarily involves the extraction of linear phase from measured or simulated data, and that the accomplishment of this task is facilitated by the invocation of analytic function theory, specifically the Bode- Hilbert integral relationships. Finally, some arguments are given for carrying out antenna transfer function measurements in the frequency domain, thus borrowing intact many highly refined calibration procedures associated with characterization of 2-port networks using automatic vector network analyzers including the so-called adapter removal algorithms.