Development of a hologram-based CATR for testing a very high gain antenna at 650 GHz

A compact antenna test range (CATR) based on a radio frequency hologram is a potential method for testing high-gain antennas at submillimetre wavelengths. Within a European Space Agency (ESA) project, a 1.5 m reflector antenna, ADMIRALS Representative Test Object (RTO), will be tested at 650 GHz during autumn 2006. For these antenna tests, MilliLab / Radio Laboratory at the Helsinki University of Technology (TKK) is designing and constructing a CATR based on a binary amplitude hologram having a diameter of 3.16 m. The designed quiet-zone width is about 2 m. A plane-polar scanner is designed for the quiet-zone field verification. The dynamic range is estimated to be 32 dB in the quiet-zone field tests and 78 dB in the tests of the high-gain test antenna.