Evaluation of Integrated Antenna Performance through Combined Use of Measurement and Full-Wave Simulation

With trending topics such as car-to-car communication or automotive radar, the evaluation of antenna performance, including the impact of the larger structure in or on which it is integrated, is a topic of rapidly growing interest. Implementing large anechoic chambers, supporting full-vehicle testing, is definitely an approach, which can serve as a reference. Nevertheless, the cost and complexity associated to such antenna test ranges are quite prohibitive. Some measurements eventually get close to impossible, as they involve unreasonable testing times and efforts, due to the size to wavelength ratio of the DUT. This paper introduces an economic alternative, based on the convergence of measurements and full-wave simulation. The described method relies on a three-step approach: (i) measure the phasor electric field radiated by a smaller-size antenna module over a surface enclosing the test sample; (ii) use an algorithm to calculate equivalent electric and magnetic currents over a surface closely surrounding the DUT; (iii) inject these currents, as a Huygens source, into a full-wave solver, where the entire supporting structure is then taken into account. The relevance of the technique is demonstrated with a complex example, where a multilayer 8×8 5G millimeter-wave antenna array frontend module is both evaluated numerically and experimentally. Two sets of simulations are created, where either the detailed numerical antenna model or the equivalent current surface is integrated in the rear-view mirror of a virtual car model. Near and far-fields are compared, where a good agreement demonstrates the relevance of the approach.