Phaseless Characterization of Flat Sources with a Planar Wide-Mesh Scanning Strategy

This work evaluates the performance of a phaseless near-field to far-field transformation when applied to a demanding antenna, i.e. antenna whose characteristics are typically problematic for phaseless characterization, as test case. It is based on a smart scanning strategy, an effective representation of the unknowns of the problem, and a proper optimization method. The characterized source is a non-canonical planar source, formed by two disconnected sub-apertures, radiating a difference far-field pattern. The characterization has been accomplished by collecting the squared amplitude of the near-field samples on a planar wide-mesh scanning grid, based on a disk modeling of the source, which is convenient for planar flat sources, thus reducing the number of sampling points and simplifying the mathematical formulation. A numerical validation has been carried out to assess the effectiveness of the proposed approach.