A Compact Minimally Invasive Antenna for OTA Testing

Qiao, Zhaolong; Wang, Zhengpeng; Loh, Tian Hong; Gao, Steven; Miao, Jungang

doi:10.1109/lawp.2019.2917087

Cited by 9 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…The field in each section is then averaged. The phase distribution of the average field includes 16 (1) The phase adjustment can be either realized by tuning the phase shifter connected to each PWG element or adjusting the position of the PWG element in the z axis in principle. However, for the PWG application, the phase and amplitude excitation coefficients are optimized and should be fixed to approximate a plane wave in the quiet zone.…”

Section: B Non-coplanar Pwg Design For Non-planar Fieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…problematic due to the near-field measurement distance and metallic ground plane usually employed in the 5G BS AUT [15], [16]. However, this issue is largely overlooked in the PWG design in the literature.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A conical skirt in front of the square probe frame was introduced in [19] to divert the energy scattered from the probe mounting structure away from the direction of the device under test (DUT). The miniaturized low scattering antennas were also reported in [16], [20], [21]. Some low scattering ground planes such as electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) and frequency selective surface (FSS) were introduced to replace the metal reflect board of antenna in [22], [23].…”

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confidence: 99%

“…1 (a) presents the 3D view of the proposed PWG probe antenna, which consists of two crossed Vivaldi antennas, one dielectric, and radome and four MAM wings. The Vivaldi antenna and MAM wing structure were reported in our previous work [16], where a double-layer dielectric structure was adopted. In this work, the only one-layer radome is employed in the design in order to improve the consistency of PWG antenna elements, without deteriorating the performance.…”

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Low Scattering Plane Wave Generator Design Using a Novel Non-Coplanar Structure for Near-Field Over-the-Air Testing

et al. 2020

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Plane Wave Generator (PWG) has recently attracted great attention from industry and academia for over-the-air (OTA) testing of base station (BS) antennas in the fifth-generation (5G) wireless communication systems. This paper aims to reduce the scattering from the PWG to the antenna under test (AUT), which might be problematic in the near-field OTA testing. First, we introduce a low monostatic radar cross section (RCS) PWG array element design. The PWG is also loaded with pyramidal microwave absorbing material (MAM) to suppress the multi-reflections between the AUT and the PWG. Furthermore, unlike coplanar PWG design generally reported in the literature, a novel non-coplanar design is proposed to realize the destructive interference of the scattered signals from the PWG, thereby significantly reducing the multiple reflections. PWG elements in the non-coplanar design are placed in the propagation direction according to planar and non-planar field distribution on the PWG radiated from the BS AUT. To validate our proposed design, a 4×4 PWG array with a 108 mm element spacing and a non-coplanar structure is developed and experimentally validated. The measured results show that the second incident wave of the proposed non-coplanar PWG array structure based on non-planar field distribution is 7.9 dB lower than that of the classical coplanar PWG design from 2.3 GHz to 3.8 GHz, and 1.9 dB lower than that of the proposed non-coplanar PWG array structure based on planar field distribution, which demonstrates the effectiveness and robustness of our proposed design. INDEX TERMS 5G, OTA testing, PWG, low scattering design, probe antenna design, non-coplanar PWG structure. I. INTRODUCTION ASSIVE multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is one of the key technologies employed at the base stations (BSs) in the sub-6 GHz 5G wireless communication systems [1], [2]. Accurate measurement of the massive MIMO BS antenna systems is essential in the performance and conformance testing. Over-the-air (OTA) testing is a competitive method to evaluate BS antennas due to its advantage of convenient operation and cost savings, compared to conventional cable conducted testing [3], [4]. The plane-wave generator (PWG), which aims to approximate a plane wave in the quiet zone with a nearfield distance, has attracted great interest recently [5]-[10]. Compared with the traditional antenna measurement methods (e.g., near-field to far field transformation, direct far-field and compact antenna testing range (CATR)), the PWG has the advantages of compact size, fast measurement, low-cost, and support for both continuous wave (CW) and modulated signal measurement. The PWG has a good potential to support for massive MIMO BS antenna parameter measurement, array calibration, radio frequency (RF) transmit and receive performance measurements. Extensive works have been reported on the PWG design in the literature, e.g. algorithms to determine the complex excitation coefficients for the PWG element [11]-[13], and guidance to design a good PWG [14]. Multiple refle...

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Section: B Non-coplanar Pwg Design For Non-planar Fieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Low Scattering Plane Wave Generator Design Using a Novel Non-Coplanar Structure for Near-Field Over-the-Air Testing

et al. 2020

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“…There are mainly two kinds of testing methods: over-the-air (OTA) testing and conducted testing. OTA testing of the antenna systems has the advantage, compared to traditional conducted testing, of not needing to utilize intermediate connectors in the antenna under test (AUT) [6][7][8][9][10][11]. Hence, the OTA testing is faster than conducted testing method, and suitable for 5G BS testing.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A High Channel Consistency Subarray of Plane-Wave Generators for 5G Base Station OTA Testing

2019

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A high channel consistency subarray of plane-wave generators (PWG) is described for fifth-generation (5G) base station (BS) over-the-air (OTA) testing. Firstly, the variation of the near field radiation characteristics of the subarray based on the feed amplitude and phase errors of the traditional power divider network is analyzed. The recommended amplitude and phase errors between channels are given. After that, a novel subarray which combines four pyramidal horn antennas and a compact 1:4 waveguide power divider is designed. The optimized perfectly symmetrical zigzag waveguide transmission lines are used to realize consistent power allocation among antenna elements. No intermediate pins are employed, which avoids the significant deterioration of channel consistency caused by assembly errors. The size of the subarray is 4.89 λ0 × 4.97 λ0 × 1.23 λ0 (λ0 is the working wavelength corresponding to the subarray center frequency at 3.5 GHz). The VSWR < 1.5 impedance bandwidth covers 3.4 GHz to 3.6 GHz. The amplitude difference between the four elements of the subarray is less than 0.5 dB, and the phase difference is less than 3°. The simulated and measured results agree well in this design.

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