Effect of Near-Field Parameters on the Reconstruction of Array Antenna Excitations

Abstract

Near-field measurements can be used as diagnostic tools to reconstruct aperture fields of array antennas and to locate their defective elements. In this paper, a computer simulation is performed to evaluate the effect of various near-field parameters such as the measurement distance and the sample spacing on the diagnostics of faulty elements in array antennas. The near-field of an N x N dipole array containing defective elements is simulated on a planar surface a distance d from the antenna with a given sampling spacing of S. Next, additive Gaussian noise is added to the near-field and the result is back-propagated to reconstruct the source. The measurement distance, the sample spacing, and the noise level are variables in this simulation study.