Investigation of deconvolution filters for high-resolution time-domain antenna measurements — A numerical study

Time domain gating is a common technique in antenna measurements to remove or evaluate the effects of extraneous reflections. Complex valued frequency domain response is transformed to time domain impulse response via Inverse Fourier Transform, so time gating can be applied. This technique relies on enough time separation between the direct antenna response and the late time reflections so that gating can be applied. Long ringing antennas such as log periodic dipole arrays present difficulties in this application. Deconvolution algorithms, such as Wiener filter and inverse filter, have been shown to be effective for pulse compression to increase time-domain resolutions. This paper examines the effectiveness of the filters, with or without measurement noise. It shows that the inverse filter is near optimal, and should be used in most applications.