On the Uncertainty Sources of Drone-Based Outdoor Far-Field Antenna Measurements

Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), colloquially known as drones, offer unparalleled flexibility and portability for outdoor and in situ antenna measurements, which is especially convenient to assess the performance of systems in their realworld conditions of application. As with any new or emerging measurement technology, it is crucial that the various sources of error must be identified and then estimated. This is especially true here where the sources of error differ from those that are generally encountered with classical antenna measurement systems. This is due to the larger number of mechanical degrees of freedom, and to the potentially less repeatable and controllable environmental conditions. In this paper, the impact of some of these various error terms is estimated as part of an ongoing measurement validation campaign. A mechanically and electrically time invariant reference antenna was characterized at ESA-ESTEC's measurement facilities which served here as an independent reference laboratory. The reference results were compared and contrasted with measurements performed outdoors at Quad-SAT's premises using QuadSAT's UAS for Antenna Performance Evaluation (UAS-APE). While a direct comparison between the measurement results from ESA-ESTEC and QuadSAT delivers information about the various uncertainties within a UAS-APE system in comparison to classical measurement facilities' and the validity of such a system for antenna testing, other tests aim at providing an estimation of the impact of each error source on the overall uncertainty budget, thus paving the way towards a standardized uncertainty budget for outdoor UAS-based sites.