A multipolarization, multi-incidence angle conical scanning Ku-band radar antenna is currently being designed and calibrated at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for the SeaWinds Scatterometer instrument. To calibrate the radar's performance, it is essential to accurately determine the antenna gain and radiation pattern characteristics over wide angular range. Such characterizations may be performed on a far-field range or in an indoor nearfield measurement facility. Among the advantage of the latter is that the antenna is in a controlled environment. This paper demonstrates the utility of a cylindrical near-field measurement approach for the SeaWinds radar antenna calibration. Both generalized measurement error models and measured tests on a standard gain hom and NASA Scatterometer instrument antenna have been performed to achieve and verify the desired calibration accuracy. A comparison between farfield measured data and those obtained from cylindrical near-field measurements was found in excellent agreement.
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