Fast Determination of Single-Cut Far-Field Pattern of Base Station Antenna at a Quasi-Far-Field Distance

In this article, we present a new approach for fast determination of the single-cut far-field (FF) pattern and antenna gain of a base station antenna with remarkably unequal aperture length and width (such as linear antenna array) at a quasi- FF (QFF) range, by taking advantage of the cylindrical wave expansion (CWE). The proposed method is free of probe compensation since the probe is stationary and the antenna under test (AUT) is in the QFF range, which makes the measurements equivalent to FF measurements. The measurement distance required by the proposed approach only needs to satisfy the FF condition and QFF condition for the relatively smaller dimension and larger dimension of the AUT, respectively. To validate the proposed method, we simulated four types of antenna array, that is, an array with a uniform distribution, a low sidelobe array, a phased array, and a shaped-beam array. It is found that the results are consistent with our theoretical analysis.