Loop antenna calibrations with inclusion of vector network analyser and comparison between calibration methods

Loop antennas are widely used in various military and civil test applications in order to measure the magnetic fields especially below 30 MHz. They are commonly calibrated as per the standards IEEE 291 and SAE-ARP 958. Although there are a good number of researches in literature about the comparisons of loop antenna calibration methods, we brought the comparison measurements one more step further in this paper and investigated the existing 3 antenna loop calibration method that requires a Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) and included it into our loop antenna calibration comparison. Ultimately, we present the determined advantages and disadvantages of the three antenna method with respect to the other standard methods.