Quantification and Correction of Signal Averaging with On-the-Fly Sampling in Near-Field Antenna Measurements

In order to achieve an acceptable signal-to-noise ratio in practical near-field antenna measurements, probe signal averaging is usually employed. Hence, the nominal sample of the probe signal at the nominal sampling point is actually an average of multiple – between two and several millions - actual samples. For on-the-fly sampling, these actual samples are not taken at the same nominal sampling point but at different actual sampling points over a sampling interval – where the probe signal is not constant. If the nominal sample of the probe signal is treated as a point quantity in the subsequent post-processing an error is thus introduced. The present work shows that this erroneous effect of signal averaging with on-the-fly sampling can be exactly quantified and exactly corrected for.