A broadband heterodyne measurement setup for active millimeter wave integrated antennas

A novel heterodyne measurement setup for the characterization of circularly or elliptically polarized active millimeter wave antennas is presented. The major advantages of this setup are a very broad bandwidth from 75 to 110 GHz, a dynamic range of more than 50 dB and a cross-polarization purity of about 30 dB. This setup has been applied to characterize a circularly polarized active patch antenna. Numerically calculated and measured results of the antenna performance are compared.