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Recent Advances in Antenna Measurement Techniques
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Recent Advances in Antenna Measurement Techniques

A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Physical Sensors".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 May 2026 | Viewed by 3783

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Claudio Gennarelli

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Salerno, Via Giovanni Paolo II, 84084 Fisciano, Italy
Interests: antennas and antenna measurement systems; non-redundant sampling representations and their application to NF-FF transformations; innovative NF scans; post-processing techniques in antenna measurements; electromagnetic scattering
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Stuart Gregson

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
Interests: antenna and communication
Prof. Dr. Claudio Curcio

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica e delle Tecnologie dell'Informazione, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy
Interests: optimisation;singular value decomposition; antenna radiation patterns; fast Fourier transforms; antenna theory; aperture antennas; electromagnetic wave scattering; inverse problems; near-field
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Rocco Guerriero

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Salerno, via Giovanni Paolo II, 84084 Fisciano, Italy
Interests: antenna measurements; near-field–far-field transformation techniques; inversion of ill-posed electromagnetic problems; antenna design; diffraction problems

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The design and production processes of an antenna require, as a crucial step, its characterization through suitable measurements. This is a very challenging task, since the antenna characteristics (frequency, electric dimension, far-field angular coverage, environmental conditions, etc.) and the intended application determine the choice of the measurement technique to be used that guarantees the desired accuracy. Antenna measurements can be accomplished either through outdoor far-field (FF) test ranges, or indoor compact ranges or near-field (NF) facilities. The pros and cons of far-field versus near-field test ranges are well known to the antenna measurement community. FF test ranges have the disadvantage that the weather conditions and surroundings (buildings, hills, objects, electromagnetic interference from other wireless networks) can impair the accuracy of the measurements and are usually employed when only the FF pattern in the principal planes is required. Indoor compact range systems retain all the peculiarities of FF measurements, but at a shorter distance and in a controlled environment. To this end, they use a collimating mechanism to create a plane wave in the location of the antenna under test, obtained by using a lens or most commonly a parabolic reflector. Indoor NF test setups are usually used when dealing with antennas working at higher frequencies and complete FF pattern evaluations and polarization information are required, which are obtained by a proper post-processing of the NF data through an NF–FF transformation. Accordingly, antenna measurement is an active field of research, with large industrial impact.

Prospective authors are invited to submit original manuscripts on topics including, but not limited to, the following:

  • Advances in indoor and outdoor test ranges;
  • Advances in far-field, compact, and RCS range measurement techniques;
  • OTA antenna measurements;
  • UAV, drone, and robotic-based measurements;
  • Advances in NF–FF transformation techniques;
  • Innovative NF measurement techniques;
  • Electromagnetic algorithms and data processing;
  • Microwave holography;
  • Phased array testing;
  • Measurement uncertainty analysis;
  • Phase retrieval methods;
  • Probe position correction;
  • Specialized antenna NF measurements;
  • Millimeter-wave and terahertz antenna measurements;
  • Time-domain NF measurements;
  • NF probe design and characterization;
  • Numerical methods related to EM measurements;
  • Measurement standards and laboratory comparisons;
  • Compressed sensing for antenna test applications.

As can be seen, the topics addressed in this Special Issue wholly fall in the scope of Sensors.

Prof. Dr. Claudio Gennarelli
Prof. Dr. Stuart Gregson
Prof. Dr. Claudio Curcio
Prof. Dr. Rocco Guerriero
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • advances in indoor and outdoor test ranges
  • advances in far-field, compact, and RCS range measurement techniques
  • OTA antenna measurements
  • UAV, drone, and robotic-based measurements
  • advances in NF–FF transformation techniques
  • innovative NF measurement techniques
  • electromagnetic algorithms and data processing
  • microwave holography
  • phased array testing
  • measurement uncertainty analysis
  • phase retrieval methods
  • probe position correction
  • specialized antenna NF measurements
  • millimeter-wave and terahertz antenna measurements
  • time-domain NF measurements
  • NF probe design and characterization
  • numerical methods related to EM measurements
  • measurement standards and laboratory comparisons
  • compressed sensing for antenna test applications

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

23 pages, 5807 KB  
Article
Numerical Analysis of Mask-Based Phase Reconstruction in Phaseless Spherical Near-Field Antenna Measurements
by Adrien A. Guth, Sakirudeen Abdulsalaam, Holger Rauhut and Dirk Heberling
Sensors 2025, 25(18), 5637; https://doi.org/10.3390/s25185637 - 10 Sep 2025
Viewed by 471
Abstract
Phase-retrieval problems are employed to tackle the challenge of recovering a complex signal from amplitude-only data. In phaseless spherical near-field antenna measurements, the task is to recover the complex coefficients describing the radiation behavior of the antenna under test (AUT) from amplitude near-field [...] Read more.
Phase-retrieval problems are employed to tackle the challenge of recovering a complex signal from amplitude-only data. In phaseless spherical near-field antenna measurements, the task is to recover the complex coefficients describing the radiation behavior of the antenna under test (AUT) from amplitude near-field measurements. The coefficients refer, for example, to equivalent currents or spherical modes, and from these, the AUT’s far-field characteristic, which is usually of interest, can be obtained. In this article, the concept of a mask-based phase recovery is applied to spherical near-field antenna measurements. First, the theory of the mask approach is described with its mathematical definition. Then, several mask types based on random distributions, ϕ-rotations, or probes are introduced and discussed. Finally, the performances of the different masks are evaluated based on simulations with multiple AUTs and with Wirtinger flow as a phase-retrieval algorithm. The simulation results show that the mask approach can improve the reconstruction error depending on the number of masks, oversampling, and the type of mask. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Antenna Measurement Techniques)
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17 pages, 8532 KB  
Article
An Effective Two-Step Procedure Allowing the Retrieval of the Non-Redundant Spherical Near-Field Samples from the 3-D Mispositioned Ones
by Francesco D'Agostino, Flaminio Ferrara, Claudio Gennarelli, Rocco Guerriero, Massimo Migliozzi and Luigi Pascarella
Sensors 2025, 25(18), 5626; https://doi.org/10.3390/s25185626 - 9 Sep 2025
Viewed by 529
Abstract
In this article, a novel procedure is developed to properly handle the 3-D mispositioning of the scanning probe in the near-field to far-field (NFtFF) transformations with spherical scanning for quasi-planar antennas under test, which make use of a non-redundant (NR) number of samples. [...] Read more.
In this article, a novel procedure is developed to properly handle the 3-D mispositioning of the scanning probe in the near-field to far-field (NFtFF) transformations with spherical scanning for quasi-planar antennas under test, which make use of a non-redundant (NR) number of samples. It proceeds through two stages. In the former, a phase correction technique, named spherical wave correction, is applied to compensate for the phase shifts of the collected NF samples, which do not belong to the measurement sphere, due to mechanical defects of the arc, or inaccuracy of the robotic arm employed in the considered NF facility driving the probe. Once the phase shifts have been compensated, the recovered NF samples belong to the set spherical surface, but their positions differ from those prescribed by the adopted NR representation, because of an imprecise control and/or inaccuracy of the positioning system. Thus, the resulting sampling arrangement is affected by 2-D mispositioning errors. Accordingly, an iterative procedure is used in the latter step to restore the NF samples at their exact locations from those determined at the first step. Once the correct sampling arrangement has been retrieved from the 3-D mispositioned one, an optimal sampling interpolation formula is employed to obtain the massive input NF data necessary for the classical spherical NFtFF transformation technique. Numerical results, showing the precision of the NF and FF reconstructions, assessed the efficacy of the developed procedure. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Antenna Measurement Techniques)
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23 pages, 13530 KB  
Article
Use of the Generalized Vector Addition Theorem for Antenna Position Translation for Spherical Mode-Filtering-Based Reflection Suppression
by Marc Dirix, Stuart F. Gregson and Rostyslav F. Dubrovka
Sensors 2025, 25(17), 5557; https://doi.org/10.3390/s25175557 - 5 Sep 2025
Viewed by 1110
Abstract
Monochromatic mode-filtering-based scattering suppression techniques have been shown to be applicable to all commonly used forms of far- and near-field antenna and RCS measurement techniques. Traditionally, the frequency-domain mode-filtering technique takes a far-field pattern, either measured directly or obtained using a suitable near-field [...] Read more.
Monochromatic mode-filtering-based scattering suppression techniques have been shown to be applicable to all commonly used forms of far- and near-field antenna and RCS measurement techniques. Traditionally, the frequency-domain mode-filtering technique takes a far-field pattern, either measured directly or obtained using a suitable near-field to far-field transformation, as its starting point. The measurement is required to be conducted such that the antenna under test (AUT) is positioned offset from the origin of the measurement coordinate system. This physical offset introduces a phase taper across the AUT pattern and results in far greater interference occurring between the direct and indirect parasitically coupled spurious scattered signals. The method is very general and can be applied to all forms of near- or far-field measurements. However, for the case of a spherical near-field measurement (SNF) approach, it is somewhat cumbersome and tedious as first we must perform a probe-corrected spherical near-field to far-field transformation, which itself involves the computation of a complete set of spherical mode coefficients, and then after the displacement has been applied to the far-electric-fields, a second spherical wave expansion and summation is required to implement the mode-filtering procedure. While this data processing chain has been widely deployed and exhaustively validated, it requires passing through the asymptotic far-field, which inevitably results in additional computational effort, as well as incurring some loss of information, which can impose limitations on further near-field applications. This paper introduces an alternative, novel, rigorous algorithm that applies the displacement of the AUT directly using the vector addition theorem for spherical waves. An efficient implementation has been developed, and it is shown that the new, rigorous algorithm for the translation and filtering can be easily implemented directly within the data processing chain of any standard spherical near-field transformation algorithm, avoiding the need to first transform to the asymptotic far-field and also removing the need for a secondary spherical mode expansion and secondary spherical mode summation. While the vector addition theorem required for the spherical near-field to far-field transformation (SNFFFT) algorithm has been described in detail in the open literature, its implementation has been limited to the case of impinging waves and positive z-directed translations where the magnitude of the displacement is necessarily larger than the minimum sphere radius (MRE). In the current paper, the addition theorem will be derived in a new form that allows the translation to be applied in any desired direction, without the need for additional rotations, as well as being valid for solutions for waves transitioning through the sphere and applicable for the case where the magnitude of the translation is smaller or larger than the radius of the minimum sphere. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Antenna Measurement Techniques)
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19 pages, 4784 KB  
Article
Accurate and Fast Numerical Estimation of Pattern Uncertainty for Mechanical Alignment Errors in High-Accuracy Spherical Near-Field Antenna Measurements
by Kyriakos Kaslis, Samel Arslanagic and Olav Breinbjerg
Sensors 2025, 25(13), 4227; https://doi.org/10.3390/s25134227 - 7 Jul 2025
Viewed by 477
Abstract
Every experimental measurement is affected by random and/or systematic error sources, causing the measurand to have an associated uncertainty quantified in terms of a confidence interval and confidence level. For high-accuracy spherical near-field antenna measurements, there are approximately 20 error sources whose individual [...] Read more.
Every experimental measurement is affected by random and/or systematic error sources, causing the measurand to have an associated uncertainty quantified in terms of a confidence interval and confidence level. For high-accuracy spherical near-field antenna measurements, there are approximately 20 error sources whose individual contributions to the measurand uncertainty must be estimated for each antenna under test; thus, this uncertainty estimation is a required task in each measurement project. The error sources associated with the mechanical alignment of the antenna under test are of particular importance, not only because the consequential pattern uncertainty differs significantly for different antennas under test, but also because the common practice of experimental uncertainty estimation is very time-consuming with separate uncertainty measurements, thus requiring the antenna under test as well as the measurement facility. We propose a numerical pattern uncertainty estimation for mechanical alignment errors based on a nominal full-sphere measurement without the need for separate uncertainty measurements. Thus, it does not occupy either the antenna under test or the measurement facilities. In addition, numerical uncertainty estimation enables the isolation of individual error sources and their contributions to pattern uncertainties. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Antenna Measurement Techniques)
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