THE MEASURED PERFORMANCE OF A PLANEWAVE GENERATOR PROTOTYPE

摘要

The fundamental concepts of operation of a Planewave Generator (PWG) were described in an earlier paper. In the present paper the measured performance of a proof of performance experiment are reported. First, we will briefly describe the concepts and architecture of the experimental configuration. Next, measurements of the electromagnetic field created by the PWG prototype in a specified test zone will be presented. A planewave figure of merit (FOM) has been defined earlier, and the measured FOM of the PWG will be compared with the FOMs of the field of a single antenna, and of a uniformly illuminated transmit array. We first discuss the experimental strategy, and our use of superposition to minimize the hardware required for the demonstration. We then present measured data that shows that a minimally configured PWG can produce field distributions that are planewave-like over a limited spatial extent, and that its field demonstrates planewave qualities that significantly exceed those achievable by a typical transmit antenna, or uniformly-illuminated array. We also present data that relates the size and quality of the planewave-like field in a test zone in terms of the number of elements in the PWG transmitting array. Finally, we present a scaling relation for the PWG, and show that the radiated field produced by the experimental hardware agrees well with the field predicted by simulation.