Low-Cost Outdoor Antenna Radiation Pattern
Measurement
Andrian Andaya Lestari
IRCTR - Indonesia
PT Telekomunikasi dan Radar Indonesia
Tangerang, Indonesia
andaya@irctr-i.com
Herlinda Serliningtyas
High-Tech Solution Division
SOLUSI247
Jakarta, Indonesia
herlinda.serliningtyas@solusi247.com
Abstract— A low-cost outdoor antenna radiation pattern
measurement technique is proposed. This technique can be used
with a low-cost scalar spectrum analyzer with no storage system.
Data acquisition is carried out using a video camera to capture
the readings on the spectrum analyzer’s display. A software
package is developed to automatically convert the captured
images into the amplitude data of the measured signal. This
technique has been found useful when sophisticated radiation
pattern measurement facility for high-gain antennas is not
available.
Keywords— Outdoor antenna measurements, far-field antenna
measurements, antenna radiation patterns, radar antennas, high-
gain antennas.
I. INTRODUCTION
In many cases the far-field zone of high-gain antennas is
located at a distance of tens of meters. It implies that indoor
radiation pattern measurements of such antennas require either
a large anechoic chamber or a smaller one equipped with a
near-field measurement facility. As a large anechoic chamber
and a near-field measurement facility are expensive and not
easily available, outdoor measurement becomes an attractive
option. However, in general outdoor antenna measurement is
also not a cheap option. It requires proper equipment to
guarantee a coherent measurement of amplitude and phase and
additional RF subsystems to exclude reflections from
surroundings [1]. Alternatively, a time-domain measurement
technique can also be used, for which proper time-domain
equipment is needed including a pulse generator and a
sampling converter [2]. Time-domain techniques are attractive
for outdoor antenna measurements since reflections from
surroundings can be excluded easily from the measured data
and furthermore they exhibit better immunity to interference.
However, time-domain measurement equipment is also
relatively expensive.
978-1-4799-7447-4/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
Deni Yulian
High-Tech Solution Division
SOLUSI247
Jakarta, Indonesia
deni.yulian@solusi247.com
Oktanto Dedi Winarko
High-Tech Solution Division
SOLUSI247
Jakarta, Indonesia
oktanto.dedi@solusi247.com
In this paper we propose a low-cost outdoor radiation
pattern measurement technique for high-gain antennas. The
proposed technique is limited to only amplitude measurement
since phase measurement would require additional and more
expensive equipment such as a remote triggering system and
vector signal measuring device.
II. THE PROPOSED TECHNIQUE
The proposed technique is illustrated in Fig. 1. On the
transmit side, the antenna under test (AUT) is fed by a power
amplifier (PA) which is driven by a signal generator or
oscillator. The AUT is rotated by a homemade turn table in
which a hall sensor is installed for triggering a relay used to
switch on the PA. The hall sensor is crucial for synchronizing
all measurements to start from exactly the same angle. On the
receive side, the probe is connected to a band-pass filter (BPF)
according to the frequency range of interest and the output of
the BPF is then measured by a scalar spectrum analyzer (SA).
In the proposed technique one can employ a low-cost SA
which has no storage system. Data acquisition is done
manually by capturing the readings on the SA’s display using a
video camera. For this purpose a software package has been
developed using Scilab to automatically convert the captured
images into the amplitude data of the measured signal.
The resolution of the measurement depends on the frame
rate of the employed video camera and the rotation speed of the
turn table. For example, if a video camera with a frame rate of
25 fr/s is used and the rotation speed of the turn table is 1 rpm,
one obtains a collection of 1500 images which result in a
measurement resolution of 0.24°. The developed software
performs conditioning of the captured images which includes
the following steps: leveling, gray-scale conversion, cropping,
first color inversion, background subtraction, second color
inversion, black-and-white conversion, data extraction, and
interpolation. Fig. 2 gives an example of the captured image
and the result of leveling and gray-scale conversion. In Fig. 3
the image is cropped to obtain the signal peak only and the first
color inversion is performed. Subsequently, background
subtraction is performed to eliminate the captured axes and
marker on the image. For data extraction, the color of the
resulting image is inverted and converted to black and white.
Hence, from the resulting white pixels on the image together
with the scale information of the SA one obtains the extracted
data. The final step is to perform interpolation for recovering
the data lost during the mentioned extraction process.
Fig. 1. Measurement setup.
(a) (b)
Fig. 2. An example of the captured image, (a) the original image, and (b)
after leveling.
(a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f)
Fig. 3. The image after (a) cropping and first color inversion, (b) background
subtraction, (c) second color inversion, (d) black-and-white conversion, (e)
data extraction, and (f) interpolation.
III. MEASUREMENT EXAMPLE
The probe used in measurement is a rectangular horn with
15 dB gain depicted in Fig. 4 (a). For the proposed technique
it is essential to cover the outer skin of the horn with
absorbing material as shown in Fig. 4 (b). The employed
absorbers substantially reduce the sidelobe level of the horn at
the frequency of interest, important to suppress reflections
coming from other directions. The AUT is a reflector antenna
fed with 32-element patch array and covered with a radome,
applied as the receiving antenna of an experimental X-band
FMCW radar [3]. For the measurement site we make use of
our 6-floor office building in Jakarta, Indonesia, and another
building which is available in the neighborhood. The AUT is
located at the roof of our office and the probe is located at the
10th floor of a hotel building at a distance of 675 m from the
AUT. The setup at the probe site is depicted in Fig. 5 and in
Fig. 6 the view from AUT to the probe site is shown.
Furthermore, for measurement of antenna gain we employ the
well-known radar range equation
2
⎛ λ ⎞ (1)
G t = Pr − Pt − 10 log ⎜ ⎟ − Gr
⎝ 4π R ⎠
where λ is the operating wavelength, G r is the gain of the
probe, G t is the gain of the AUT, Pr is the received power,
Pt is the transmitted power, and R is the distance between
AUT and the probe. In addition, the radiation pattern of the
AUT is computed and plotted in Fig. 7. The computed gain,
beamwidth and first sidelobe level of the AUT at 9.4 GHz are
19.5 dBi, 2°, and -13 dB, respectively.
In this measurement, the rotation speed of the turn table and
the frame rate of the employed video camera, result in around
1200 images of the captured signal. Those images are
processed by the aforementioned software to obtain the
measured data of the signal amplitudes. In this case it takes
about 1 hour to complete the process on a fast PC. The output
of the software, which in fact is the SA readings, is plotted in
Fig. 8(a). The start of the measurement can be easily identified
in the captured images when the PA is switched on by the hall
sensor. It serves as synchronization for all measurements to
commence from exactly the same angle.
As the roof of the building where the AUT is located
cannot be freed from obstacles such as water reservoir, TV/Wi-
Fi antennas, and lightning rods, reflections from those
obstacles are seen as backlobes in the measurement result. The
main and the first sidelobes of the AUT measured with and
without radome are plotted in Fig. 8(b) and it is shown that the
measured beamwidth and first sidelobe level of the AUT at 9.4
GHz are 2°, and -11 dB, respectively. Moreover, using (1) the
measured gain is found to be around 20 dBi and thus the
measurement is generally considered to be in agreement with
computation. The observed discrepancies are mainly due to the
non-ideal AUT site which cannot be freed from obstacles and
various mechanical parts of the AUT which cannot be modeled
in the simulation. Nevertheless, it is shown that this low-cost
technique is especially useful to analyze the main lobes of the
AUT. To obtain a more accurate result for the whole radiation
pattern, the AUT should be freed from neighboring obstacles.

(a) (b)

Fig. 7. Computed radiation pattern of AUT.

Fig. 4. (a) The probe (horn) and (b) the probe covered with absorbers.

(a)
Fig. 5. Measurement setup at the probe site.

(b)
Fig. 8. (a) Spectrum analyzer readings of AUT (no radome), (b) measured
Fig. 6. View from AUT to the probe site (distance = 675 m). radiation pattern of AUT (with and without radome).
 IV. CONCLUSION
A low-cost outdoor antenna radiation pattern measurement
technique is proposed. This technique can be used with a low-
cost scalar spectrum analyzer with no storage system. Data
acquisition is carried out using a video camera to capture the
readings on the spectrum analyzer’s display. A software
package is developed to automatically convert the captured
images into the amplitude data of the measured signal. This
technique has been found useful especially to analyze the main
lobes of the AUT when sophisticated radiation pattern
measurement facility for high-gain antennas is not available.

REFERENCES
[1] P. Aubry et al., “Implementation of an outdoor far-field measurement
system at IRCTR,” in Proc. 28th European Microwave Conf.,
Amsterdam, The Netherlands, pp. 549-554, 1998.
[2] B. N. Levitas, “Time-domain antenna measurement systems,” in Proc.
UWB and Ultrashort Impulse Signals, Sevastopol, Ukraine, pp. 90-95,
2006.
[3] A.A. Lestari, et al., “INDRA: the Indonesian maritime radar,” in
Proc. 2008 European Radar Conference (EuRAD 2008),
Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Oct. 2008.