Evaluation of an Unmanned Aerial System for Antenna Diagnostics and Characterization

Abstract

The main goal of this contribution is to analyze the performance of an Unmanned Aerial System for Antenna Measurement (UASAM). UASAM can be used for performing antenna diagnostics and characterization at the antenna operational location. The proposed system measures the power transmitted by the Antenna Under Test (AUT) in the near field region. These measurements are post-processed to perform antenna diagnostics and to retrieve the far field pattern. Due to the lack of phase data, a phase retrieval technique called phaseless Sources Reconstruction Method (pSRM) is used to obtain the aperture fields. In this contribution, the effect of acquisition grid truncation in the aperture field reconstruction quality and in the far field patterns is studied. Three different grids have been considered: cylindrical and arc cylindrical surfaces, and planar surfaces parallel to the AUT aperture. It has been found that using planar acquisition grids the quality of the antenna diagnostics slightly improves and the flight times are shortened (compared to cylindrical acquisitions).