A Low-Cost Antenna Efficiency Measurement System Using a Portable Scalar Network Analyzer

In this paper, a low-cost antenna efficiency measurement system using a portable scalar network analyzer is proposed. The scalar network analyzer (SNA) employed in this system is capable of emitting a signal with specified power at one port and receiving the signal at another port. This makes a low-cost antenna efficiency measurement system possible. An automatic control system and related software has been developed. To validate the accuracy of our approach, the results obtained from SNA is compared to that obtained from vector network analyzer. The proposed system not only offers a cost-effective alternative for measuring antenna efficiency but also simplifies the measurement procedures, which means the the SNA is a cost-effective replacement.