Antenna Diagnostics Based on Infinitesimal Dipole Modeling With Limited Measurement on Antenna Aperture

Abstract

This letter presents an antennadiagnosis method using infinitesimal dipole modeling. For antenna diagnosis, it is important to estimate the current distribution of the antenna aperture. By using the measured near-field data of the antenna, the infinitesimal dipole current distribution that can generate the same near-field measurement result is extracted. This current distribution can be considered as a back-projection image on the antenna aperture. Using the infinitesimal dipole modeling, accurate antenna diagnosis is possible even by using only the measured near-field which is limited over the antenna aperture. We compared the results of the conventional antenna diagnosis method based on Fourier transform and the proposed method for the near-field measurement results of the standard gain horn antenna. Although the limited near-field measurement over the antenna aperture, the back-projection image for the antenna diagnosis of the proposed method has a very high resolution.