Setup and Error Analysis of a Fully Coherent UAV-based Near-Field Measurement System

A UAV-based near-field measurement system for fully coherent and very flexible in-situ antenna measurements is presented. A laser tracker is utilized in order to determine the measurement locations with high precision and to overcome the existing limitations of real-time kinematic GPS positioning systems. In combination with a vector network analyzer, good measurement results can be achieved and are presented in the paper. Furthermore, two methods for the analysis of the measurement data are described.