Kim Woobin, Im Hyeong-Rae, Noh Yeong-Hoon, Hong Ic-Pyo, Tae Hyun-Sung, Kim Jeong-Kyu, Yook Jong-Gwan
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Yonsei University, Seoul 03722, Korea.
Department of Information and Communication Engineering, Kongju National University, Cheonan 31080, Korea.
Sensors (Basel). 2020 Dec 16;20(24):7199. doi: 10.3390/s20247199.
Near-field to far-field transformation (NFFFT) is a frequently-used method in antenna and radar cross section (RCS) measurements for various applications. For weapon systems, most measurements are captured in the near-field area in an anechoic chamber, considering the security requirements for the design process and high spatial costs of far-field measurements. As the theoretical RCS value is the power ratio of the scattered wave to the incident wave in the far-field region, a scattered wave measured in the near-field region needs to be converted into field values in the far-field region. Therefore, this paper proposes a near-field to far-field transformation algorithm based on spherical wave expansion for application in near-field RCS measurement systems. If the distance and angular coordinates of each measurement point are known, the spherical wave functions in an orthogonal relationship can be calculated. If each weight is assumed to be unknown, a system of linear equations as numerous as the number of samples measured in the near electric field can be generated. In this system of linear equations, each weight value can be calculated using the iterative least squares QR-factorization method. Based on this theory, the validity of the proposed NFFFT is verified for several scatterer types, frequencies and measurement distances.
近场到远场变换(NFFFT)是天线和雷达散射截面(RCS)测量中针对各种应用常用的方法。对于武器系统,考虑到设计过程的安全要求以及远场测量的高空间成本,大多数测量是在电波暗室的近场区域进行的。由于理论RCS值是远场区域中散射波与入射波的功率比,因此在近场区域测量的散射波需要转换为远场区域的场值。因此,本文提出了一种基于球面波展开的近场到远场变换算法,用于近场RCS测量系统。如果每个测量点的距离和角坐标已知,则可以计算出具有正交关系的球面波函数。如果假设每个权重未知,则可以生成一个与近电场中测量的样本数量一样多的线性方程组。在这个线性方程组中,每个权重值可以使用迭代最小二乘QR分解法来计算。基于该理论,针对几种散射体类型、频率和测量距离验证了所提出的NFFFT的有效性。