Practical Application of the Equivalent Source Method as an Antenna Diagnostics Tool [AMTA Corner]

Recently, significant efforts from different research groups have been aimed at the problem of reconstructing the extreme near field radiated by an antenna from measured field data. Among the different proposed solutions, the inverse-source or Equivalent-Current/Source Method (EQC), based on discretization of integral equations, has attracted considerable attention, due to a host of promising applications in antenna design and diagnostics. The integral-equation approach constitutes a complement to more-established tools, such as plane-wave or spherical-wave expansion. At the expense of a heavier computational burden, this method offers a greater generality and flexibility, since it allows reconstructing sources on arbitrary three-dimensional surfaces enclosing the antenna under test (AUT).