One-Antenna Method with Time Domain Gating
using Equi-Ripple FIR filter
Karsten Schubert
Department of Engineering Sciences
Jade University of Applied Sciences
Wilhelmshaven, Germany
karsten.schubert@jade-hs.de
Abstract—The one-antenna method is adopted to the practical
antenna validation needs in EMC laboratories. The proposed
setup allows verification of important characteristics like antenna
gain and antenna factor on a regular basis. The experiments
show very good agreement with manufacturer calibration data.
For frequency bands above 1 GHz the metallic wall of a typical
shielded room can be used to calibrate e.g. wide band horn
antennas. Considerations about potential sources of measurement
errors are investigated, while the application of equi-ripple FIR
filters – applied during the time domain gating – allows to
minimize the uncertainty.
Index Terms—one-antenna method, antenna gain, antenna
factor, time domain gating, image method, equi-ripple FIR filter
I. I NTRODUCTION
Antenna verification is necessary in daily EMC laboratory
practice. This paper discusses an antenna calibration method-
ology which can be easily applied. The methodology is based
on the One-Antenna Calibration Method initially proposed in
[1] and the time domain gating by using complex S-parameter
from a Vector Network Analyser (VNA). A large set of
equipment is usually required for antenna calibration, e.g. large
anechoic chamber or open area test site, reference antennas and
long coaxial cables with good phase stability. The investigated
methodology solely requires a VNA and a metallic plate, e.g. a
simple whiteboard or the metallic wall of a shielded room, and
the Antenna Under Test (AUT). Finally, this allows to measure
the AUT’s antenna gain in a normal laboratory environment:
Inside a normal room without an anechoic chamber.
The results presented in this paper show very good agree-
ment between the antenna gain of the manufacturer calibration
data and the results from this study.
II. M EASUREMENT SETUP
The measurement setup consists of an AUT, a VNA, and
a metallic reflector plate (3 m height and 4 m width) which
stands perpendicular to a concrete floor. Using a short phase-
stable coaxial cable, the VNA is connected to the AUT. Fur-
thermore, the VNA is configured for One-Port measurement
and OSM calibrated at the end of the attached cable, i.e.
978-1-7281-5579-1/20/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE
Jens Werner
Department of Engineering Sciences
Jade University of Applied Sciences
Wilhelmshaven, Germany
jens.werner@jade-hs.de
Reflector
Image da
d
antenna
AUT
h
VNA
Floor
Fig. 1. Measurement setup (typical values as used in experiment: h =
0.5 m...2.0 m and d = 0.5 m...5 m)
at the same reference plane as the antenna feedpoint. The
AUT is located at the height h above the floor and aligned
perpendicularly to the reflector. The setup is shown in Fig. 1.
III. T HEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS
The distance between reflector and AUT has a significant
impact on the accuracy of the measured antenna gain. A too-
small distance one the on hand provides inaccurate results:
The AUT is not in the far field, multiple reflections between
reflector and AUT appear, and the uncertainty about the exact
phase centre distance is unknown.
A too-large distance on the other hand also decreases the
accuracy: Due to the large distance d, the amplitude of the
wanted reflection is attenuated and superimposed by unwanted
reflections from the environment which appear in the same
distance as the reflector, e.g. walls, floor or ceiling. Depending
on the reflector’s physical size, the complete AUT’s main
antenna beam has to be reflected by the reflector, otherwise
the mirror theory would not be applicable.
This investigation shows that an optimum distance d, where
the accuracy becomes maximal, exists.
A. Far field condition
Friis transmission equation is valid only in the far field.
Estimating the minimum distance df,min where far field con-
dition is applicable, the Fraunhofer distance, defined in Eq. (1),
is frequently used. In this formula, a is the largest dimension
of the radiator, and λ is the wavelength. The factor 21 in Eq. (1)
is based on the fact that the distance to the mirrored antenna
is twice as long as the distance to the reflector.
1 2a2
df,min = · (1)
2 λ
Depending on the specific antenna type, this investigation
shows also very accurate results, even when the distance is
only a fraction of df,min . This is especially the case when
the antenna’s physical aperture is significantly larger than the
calculated receiving cross section, e.g. for the investigated
double ridged waveguide horn (RFspin, DRH18).
S11(f )∗ (the impulse response in the time domain is always
pure real) [3].
Avoiding zero padding at the upper frequency edge M ·∆f ,
the number of filter coefficients Mtg has to be as few as pos-
sible. The best performance under this condition provides an
equi-ripple FIR-filter [5]. This filter has ripple in the stopband
(specified by As ) but also in the passband (specified by Ap ).
Such a filter including the tolerance scheme is illustrated in
Fig. 2. The passband width dp is specifiable and the transition
10
Ap
0
-10

20lg|H(d)|
B. System theory dp
-20 A s As
A VNA performs its measurements in the frequency domain dt dt
and samples the measurement data on a discrete frequency -30
grid. Using an equidistant grid, time domain gating becomes -40
easy to handle by considering the rules of system theory.
The presented investigation is always using an equidistant -50
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
grid which satisfies Eq. (2), where ∆f is the fundamental fre- d/m
quency, M is the positive integer number of frequency points
and k ∈ {1, 2, 3, ..., M }. This constellation is also known as Fig. 2. Illustration of the time gating parameters
harmonic grid [2]. The actual used setting is ∆f = 2 MHz,
distance dt results from As , Ap , and Mtg . The larger the
M = 10, 000, and therefore the highest frequency becomes
coefficient number Mtg is, the smaller transition distance dt
20 GHz.
becomes. This investigation uses Mtg = 4001 coefficients,
fk = k · ∆f (2) that means that the frequency range till 18 GHz is usable
without zero padding [4]. The used filter parameters are listed
Using a fundamental frequency of ∆f = 2 MHz, the highest in TABLE I.
unambiguously resolvable time, where no aliasing appears,
becomes ∆t = ∆f −1 = 500 ns [2]. In case of free space TABLE I
c0
propagation the maximum distance becomes dmax = 12 · ∆f = T IME GATE FILTER PARAMETER IN THIS EXPERIMENT
1
74.948 m ( 2 due to forward and return path), where c0 is the Mtg As / dB Ap / dB dt / m dp / m
speed of light. 4001 -100 ±0.05 0.075 0.16 · · · 1.1
In general, time domain gating is performed through a
weighting function of the impulse response in the time domain. IV. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION
Here, the specific implementation of the time domain gating
is performed by a convolution in the frequency domain. Using the time domain gating, the antenna gain can be
Using the complex scattering parameter S11, Eq. (3) yields calculated by Eq. (4), where dpc is the distance to the antenna’s
the desired time gating (tg). phase centre. Especially for a small distance d, the uncertainty
of dpc has a huge impact on the accuracy. This investigation
S11tg (f ) = S11 (f ) ~ Htg (f ) (3) estimates dpc = d + 12 · da , where da is the antenna aperture
length, see Fig. 1.
The expression Htg (f ) is the inverse Fourier transform
of the weighting function. The inverse case, namely filtering 4π · 2dpc · f
GdB (f ) = 10 · lg|S11tg (f )| + 10 · lg (4)
performed by a convolution in the time domain with a filter’s c0
impulse response, is well discussed in system theory lecture In the experiment the DRH18 antenna is located at the
e.g. [3], [4]. Due to the duality between the Fourier trans- height h = 1.5 m. Fig. 3 shows the antenna gain determined
formation and the inverse of them, filter functions from the through the manufacturer’s calibration combined with the
time domain are also applicable in the frequency domain. The measured antenna gain after application of the time domain
numerical behaviour of Eq. (3) is the same as a Finite Impulse gating. Using a distance d = 2.5 m and a time gate pass length
Repose (FIR)-filter in a common digital signal processing of dp = 0.55 m, the measured value and the calibration data
environment. fit very well. In order to provide a more detailed view on the
It should be noted that the convolution also needs S- deviation, Fig. 4 shows the difference between the calculated
parameter data for negative frequencies and for 0 Hz. The gain GdB,c and the manufacturer gain GdB,m .
latter is derived from simple resistance measurement, while the For an ideal match between calibration and measurement,
former are implicitly known due to the relation S11(−f ) = the difference would be zero. In practice, there is always a
 16

dp = 0.16m
14 0.9
dp = 0.24m
0.8 dp = 0.4 m
12 0.7 dp = 0.6 m
G/dBi

0.6
10
0.5

8 Manufacturer‘s calibration data

0.4
Measured antenna gain 0.3
6 0 1 2 3 4 5
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 d/m
f/GHz

Fig. 3. Antenna gain from manufacturer (grey) and time gated S11 (black) Fig. 5. Error results

deviation between both data sources, particularly since the increased propagation distance. Unwanted reflections become
calibration includes an uncertainty, which is also depicted more relevant and distort the result. Furthermore, the time gate
in Fig. 4. The two plots in Fig. 4 refer to two different length becomes more significant. One explanation for this is,
configurations in distance d and passband width dp . The black that the reflection on the floor becomes more relevant and this
curve obviously matches better then the grey curve, which reflection appears only slightly later than the wanted reflection.
represents the result for a configuration with d = 5.0 m and With a suitable time gate length dp = 0.24 m (solid grey line),
dp = 1.1 m. the time gate is able to separate both reflections. Choosing
Most absolute values of the black curve are < 0.5 dB and a too-short time gate length such as the dashed grey line,
even the biggest difference is 1 dB whereas the absolute values the measured gain becomes inaccurate because a part of the
of the grey curve often overrun the 1 dB value and the biggest wanted impulse response also disappears. Independent of the
difference is even > 3 dB. gate length the error increases for short distances (d < 1 m).
The reasons for that have been already discussed in chapter
III. The measured antenna gain becomes most precise for a
d = 5.0 m, dp = 1.10m distance between 1.5 m and 2.5 m, provided that the impulse
3
d = 2.5 m, dp = 0.55m response is not truncated by the time gate as for dp = 0.16 m
GdB,c(f)-GdB,m(f)

2 Calibration uncertaint
y
(dashed grey line).
1 Eq. (1) suggests a minimum distance of df,min = 3.55 m
0
(a = 243 mm and λ = 18cGHz 0
) for the DRH18 antenna.
However, this distance does not results in the most precise
-1
result for this chosen setup.
-2
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 V. C ONCLUSION AND F UTURE W ORK
f/GHz
Time domain gating with the one-antenna method was
Fig. 4. Difference between measured and expected gain for different settings done by convolution in the frequency domain and applica-
tion of equi-ripple FIR filter. The results show very good
Using Eq. (5) as a measure for the match between estimated agreement between calculated and manufacturer antenna gain.
and measured gain, this equation calculates a Figure Of Merit The optimum distance between antenna and reflecting wall
(FOM). Calculating an RMS value (between lower and upper is investigated with respect to degrading effects caused by
frequency indices nl and nu ) based on dB does not represent multiple reflections and the position of the antenna phase
a real physical measure, but is more convenient to interpret by center.
engineers. Nevertheless, it is finally a value to judge the total
R EFERENCES
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nu − nl ZVR,” Rohde & Schwarz, Tech. Rep. 1EZ44 0E, 1998.
k=nl
[3] C. K. Chui and G. Chen, Signal Processing and Systems Theory.
Fig. 5 shows different configurations for d and dp as an Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 1992.
[4] T. Frey and M. Bossert, Signal- und Systemtheorie, 2nd ed. Vieweg +
array of curves, where the abscissa represents the distance Teubner Verlag, 2009.
d, the ordinate represents the FOM defined in Eq. (5), and the [5] T. Parks and J. McClellan, “Chebyshev approximation for nonrecursive
different curves represent different time gate pass lengths dp . digital filters with linear phase,” IEEE Transactions on Circuit Theory,
vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 189–194, March 1972.
The inaccuracy (i.e the FOM) of the measured antenna
gain increases when the distances is > 3 m. The reason
for this is, that the wanted reflection is attenuated by the