Antenna Diagnostics and Characterization Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

• Published in: IEEE access Vol. 5; pp. 23563 - 23575
• Main Authors: Garcia-Fernandez, Maria, Alvarez Lopez, Yuri, Arboleya, Ana, Gonzalez-Valdes, Borja, Rodriguez-Vaqueiro, Yolanda, De Cos Gomez, Maria Elena, Las-Heras Andres, Fernando
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01-01-2017; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Accuracy; antenna diagnostics; antenna measurement; Antenna measurements; Antenna radiation patterns; Antennas; Current distribution; Current measurement; Equivalence; Far fields; Low cost; near-field to far-field transformation (NF-FF); Pattern analysis; Phase measurement; Phase retrieval; phaseless measurements; Power measurement; real time kinematic (RTK); sources reconstruction method (SRM); Unmanned aerial vehicles; Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)
• ISSN: 2169-3536; 2169-3536
• DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2017.2754985

This paper presents a compact, low-cost unmanned aerial system for antenna measurement. The proposed system overcomes existing limitations in terms of unmanned aerial vehicle positioning and data geo-referring accuracy using a real-time kinematic positioning system to achieve centimeter-level accuracy. Amplitude-only measurements acquired using a low-cost power sensor are processed by means of the phaseless sources reconstruction method. This is an iterative phase retrieval technique that allows recovering an equivalent currents distribution, which characterizes the antenna under test (AUT). From these equivalent currents, near-field to far-field transformation is applied to calculate the AUT radiation pattern. This contribution also analyzes probe antenna characterization and the impact of positioning and geo-referring accuracy on the radiation pattern. Two application examples of antenna measurement at Sand C-bands using the implemented system are presented.