The design and construction of an anechoic chamber for automated antenna measurements

This thesis reports on the design and construction of an anechoic chamber for automated far-field measurements of microwave antennas. The design implements an automated measurement system in which measurements for a particular antenna structure can be made with two degrees of freedom in the frequency range of 1 to 50 GHz. This automation allows for the unattended measurement of the full radiation pattern of an antenna in the far-field, defined as 2D2/λ+λ where D is the largest dimension of the antenna and λ is the wave length [1]. The automation is accomplished through a software interface to the control and measurement system in the anechoic chamber. The detailed description of the anechoic chamber, including hardware and software, are presented