Low-cost planar near-field to far-field measurement system for a small antenna

This paper presents the design of low-cost planar near-field to far-field measurement system for a small antenna and small scattering objects. This work is proposed to accurately and precisely measure the electromagnetic (EM) wave scattered from a small object. The minimum scanning resolution of the proposed system is 0.5 cm per step in horizontal and vertical directions. In order to design the proposed measurement system, the low-cost stepping motor is employed to drive the near-field probe. The proposed system is controlled by a microcontroller Chipkit UNO32 by interfacing with the LabView graphic user interface (GUI) to control and display the actual position of the near-field probe. The maximum scanning area of the developed system is 50×50 cm
²
. The position error measurement of the proposed system is also investigated. Moreover, the preliminary far-field results from simulated near-field and measured near-field are compared. Both simulated and measured results are obtained by the proposed NF-to-FF mathematical transformation program. It is observed that the results from the proposed planar near-field to far-field measurement system is in good agreement with the simulation.