Jensen–Shannon Divergence Hypothesis Test for Determining Reverberation Chamber Field Distribution

Since the field distribution within a reverberation chamber (RC) depends on multiple factors, ascertaining the exact distribution is rather complicated. The Kolmogorov–Smirnov (KS) and Anderson–Darling (AD) are conventional hypothesis tests applied to field determination. However, both KS and AD tests may struggle to determine the most suitable distribution model in some practical scenarios. In this work, the Jensen–Shannon divergence (JSD) hypothesis test is proposed to address this issue. The performances of KS, AD, and JSD tests are fully studied through extensive simulations and measurements. It is found that the JSD test outperforms KS and AD tests in most cases, which indicates that the JSD test has a wider application range. The effects caused by various factors on the performances of KS, AD, and JSD tests are analyzed, and guidelines for balancing the complexity and performance are given as well. In addition, the practical uses and potential challenges of JSD are discussed. Our findings provide a promising solution to the field determinations and enrich the hypothesis test framework in the antenna and propagation community.