Summary
International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation
2008
Session Number:3C21
Session:
Number:3C21-2
Wide Band Dual Polarized Probes for Near and Farfield Measurement Systems
L. J. Foged, A. Giacobini, R. Morbidini, L.Scialacqua,
pp.-
Publication Date:2008/10/27
Online ISSN:2188-5079
Summary:
Dual polarized probes for modern high precision measurement systems have strict requirements in terms of pattern shape, polarization purity, return loss and port-to-port isolation. A desired feature of a good probe is that the useable bandwidth should exceed that of the antenna under test so that probe mounting and alignment is performed only once during a measurement campaign. As a consequence, the probe design is a trade-off between performance requirements and the usable bandwidth of the probe. A new probe technology has been developed capable of achieving 1:4 bandwidth while maintaining the high performance of traditional probe designs [1?4]. This paper describes the new probe technology and discusses the application of these probes in spherical near field and traditional far field measurement systems. An example of a field probe covering the frequency range from 800MHz to 3.0GHz is shown in figure 1. The mechanical and electrical probe requirements have been derived from a trade-off on the particular needs of high accuracy dual polarized near field measurement systems. The trade-off also took into account the achievable performance considering different state-of-the-art probe technologies [1], [2] and inputs from potential clients with far field and near field systems. The mechanical probe performance specification requires a robust but compact design with low mass to allow for easy handling during mounting and alignment procedures.