Construction of an Inexpensive Anechoic Chamber and Its Applications in Undergraduate Research [Education Corner]

Anechoic chambers provide isolated and controlled environments that minimize electromagnetic interference to enable measurements and testing of radio-frequency (RF) devices. Having access to such a facility enhances the learning experience of students as they undertake their first few electromagnetics courses. However, commercial anechoic chambers are expensive to acquire. In this article, we provide a set of instructions that were used to construct a simple, cost-effective rectangular anechoic chamber for educational use at The Catholic University of America (CUA). We hope that future teams will find these instructions useful if they would like to fashion a similar chamber. This apparatus was built as part of a yearlong senior project and will be used by undergraduate and graduate students at CUA