Millimeter-Wave Far-Field Range Antenna Measurement System for a W-Band Monopulse Antenna

Abstract

In this study, a millimeter-wave far-field range antenna measurement system is proposed for W-band monopulse antenna measurements. Since the W-band monopulse antenna installed in radar systems has many input/output ports, multiple calculations are required to measure all the ports. We propose a system structure capable of the simultaneous measurement of multiple channels to quickly and accurately measure the performance of a monopulse antenna. The proposed measurement system includes a multi-channel rotary joint, a pair of diplexers, and multiple vector network analyzer extenders. In addition, an RF sub-system is implemented to reliably measure the phase of the W-band radiation pattern. It utilizes a shared local oscillator source and external power amplifiers for the transmit and receive paths. Employing the proposed multi-channel antenna measurement system, the sum/difference channels of a monopulse antenna were simultaneously measured according to the azimuth angle. In addition, a comparison of the far-field measurements provided by the proposed system and the near-field measurements was conducted.

Keywords

• antenna measurements
• far-field radiation pattern
• millimeter-wave measurements
• millimeter-wave radar
• monopulse antennas