Estimation of the Rician K-factor in Reverberation Chambers for Improved Repeatability in Terminal Antenna Measurements

The in-network performance of the mobile phone depends highly on the terminal antennas. Their performance may reduce the coverage and the capacity of the whole network. Hence, an antenna measurement method that accurately emulates the in-network radio environment is much desired. The reverberation, or mode-stirred, chamber is a cavity resonator with a high Q factor used for testing the performance of terminals and terminal antennas in a controlled field environment. In order to create a homogeneous field inside the chamber, emulating an isotropic multipath environment, mode stirrers are used. The Rician K-factor is a statistical parameter that describes the field distribution in the chamber and is defined as the ratio of the unstirred to stirred field components in the chamber. This K-factor varies from zero to infinity. In order to be able to accurately repeat a measurement performed in a reverberation chamber it is, hence, of greatest importance to accurately determine the Rician K-factor from said measurements. In this paper, a statistical model for the electromagnetic fields in reverberation chamber is reviewed for a Line of Sight (LOS) environment. An Estimator of the Rician K-factor is derived and its accuracy is verified