Planar Near‐Field to Far‐Field Transformation Using a Single Moving Probe and a Fixed Probe Arrays

A fast and accurate method is presented for computing far‐field antenna patterns from planar near‐field measurements. The planar near‐field data can be sampled either using a single moving dipole probe or using an array of dipole probes. Near‐field to far‐field transformation for planar scanning may be efficiently performed under certain conditions by exploiting the block Toeplitz structure of the matrix and using conjugate gradient method and the fast Fourier transform, thereby drastically reducing computation time and storage requirements. The chapter argues that a single scanning moving probe may be replaced by a fixed array of probes to sample the planar near field for the solution of the equivalent magnetic currents on the surface enclosing the antenna under test. The source reconstruction method is a computational technique developed for antenna diagnostics and for carrying out near‐field to far‐field transformation.