Research on probe position error analysis and correction in antenna time-domain near-field measurement system

For the antenna time-domain near-field measurement system, the probe position error is one of the most important error sources. Traditionally, many methods of its analysis and correction have been presented. However, these methods work only when the position error is much smaller than the AUT's wave length. Besides, the computation of these traditional methods is always large. This paper bases on the time-domain to frequency-domain transform of the practical time-domain measurements, applies a new method of unequally spaced near-field to far-field transformation to the measurement data. The new algorithm just needs the known theory locations of sampling points and the approximate probe position errors instead of the usual restriction that sampling points be located on a plane rectangular grid. The final measurements illustrate that the algorithm can eliminate the effect caused by probe position error which improves the accuracy of the test.