Advances in Planar Mathematical Absorber Reflection Suppression

When making antenna measurements, great care must be taken in order to obtain high quality data. This is especially true for near-field antenna measurements as a significant amount of mathematical post-processing is required in order that useful far-field data can be determined. However, it is often found that the integrity of these measurements can be compromised in a large part through range reflections, i.e. multipath [1]. For some time a technique named Mathematical Absorber Reflection Suppression (MARS) has been used to reduce range multi-path effects within spherical [2, 3], cylindrical [4, 5] and most recently planar [6, 7] nearfield antenna measurement systems. This paper presents the results of a recent test campaign which yields further verification of the effectiveness of the technique together with a reformulation of the post-processing algorithm which, for the first time, utilises a rigorous spherical wave expansion based orthogonalisation and filtering technique.