Low Computational Cost Modelling of Anechoic Chambers and Probe Effect in Antenna Measurement

Full wave and ray tracing solvers are used to evaluate the behavior of anechoic chamber to allow a trade-off between computational costs and performances. Full wave results are extremely accurate in case of well-defined absorbers modelling which is not straightforward due to not available detailed information from absorbers suppliers. High computational times added to time needed to set up the model are not acceptable in case of several iterations.Ray tracer modelling is less demanding and take only seconds. Although not as accurate as full wave, a combination can be envisaged where ray tracer gives a fast insight on different models, leaving the full wave to check few selected ones.In this paper a ray-tracing and an image theory-based tool for fast modelling of anechoic chambers including the probe effect will be presented and compared.