Anechoic and Reverberation Chambers: Theory, Design and Measurements

An anechoic chamber (AC) is a large room lined with radio absorbing materials (RAMs) on the walls, floor and ceiling to simulate a free space environment. It has been used in antennas, radar, and Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) areas for many years, but the design of an AC is a challenging system-level problem, involving different companies such as those producing RAMs, antennas or mechanical control systems. The anechoic chamber has been used in the RF and microwave industry for many years. This book provides the latest systematic solutions for anechoic chamber design using state-of-the-art computational electromagnetics algorithms. The objective is to maximize the chamber performance and minimize the overall cost. The AC designs are verified by measurement results from Microwave Vision Group (MVG) which validate the accuracy of the solution. Reverberation chambers (RCs) were originally developed for Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) measurements. Over the past few years the application area has been extended greatly, from antenna measurements to communication channel emulation. It is believed in some applications that using an RC is much better than using an AC. The number of published papers in the new applications of the RC has increased significantly, but currently there is no relevant book in this area to summarize the latest advances to help people to apply these methods in practice. This book will fill this gap and provide a relatively comprehensive reference for radio frequency (RF) engineers and EMC engineers to use these chambers with the latest technology, covering a series of the latest measurement methods in the RC. These two chambers are essential measurement facilities for antennas and EMC measurements. It will be shown that they are closely related; for example, both of them can be used for antenna efficiency, and radiated emission and immunity measurements. Comparison between them will be made to identify their advantages and disadvantages.