Applications of microwave holography to the assessment of antennas and antenna arrays

Gabor's original holography, which is the basic theory of modern microwave holographic techniques, is introduced. By computer simulations, it is demonstrated that the conventional holographic approach can be used as a tool to reconstruct aperture field distributions of an antenna with some constraints. Computer simulations of the theory and technique of the improved microwave holographic approach originally introduced by Rahmat-Samii et al. are carried out. The results show that it can be used for surface distortion diagnosis of large reflector antennas. The physical optics integral formulation is derived by general solutions of the vector wave equations. The necessary theory , which is needed to reconstruct the aperture field from near-field measurements both in a rectangular coordinate system and in a cylindrical coordinate system is developed. It is based on the plane wave spectrum and the vector wave modal expansion of an electromagnetic field. By using a simple dipole and other well-defined antennas, computer simulations have been performed. The results show that the technique is rigorous and applicable. It is also demonstrated that the sampling intervals and the number of sampling points should be chosen carefully in order to obtain a satisfactory resolution of the reconstructed aperture field. Furthermore, the simulations carried out in this work reveal that the real aperture field distribution of a dipole antenna has a maximum point at each end of the antenna. This characteristic can only be obtained at a very close distance to the antenna. This study also reveals the significant contributions of the evanescent waves to the aperture reconstruction. A simple but effective method for examining the evanescent waves from the measured near-field is also presented. By using dipoles and other well known antennas and antenna arrays, the experiments were carried out. The experimental results provide reasonable good agreements with the simulations. The technique proposed is effective and accurate