On the Evaluation of an Indoor Far-Field Conductive Chamber

Abstract

This paper presents the analysis and evaluation of an indoor far-field chamber used for radar cross section (RCS) evaluation. The range has conductive walls on all sides except for the pyramidal absorber covered back wall. The chamber was designed such that wall/floor/ceiling interactions occur with a distance (time) delay allowing for their isolation from the test region. Software gating techniques were used to remove these unwanted signals. This paper presents an analysis of the conductive chamber using Geometrical Optics (GO). The objective was to analyze and evaluate the plane wave quality in the chamber test region. The evaluation of the plane wave was performed using the angle transform technique. This method involved measuring the complex RCS vs. aspect angle of a rotating cylinder. The measured results were compared to analytical results and measured antenna patterns.