< back to main site

Publications

A rigorous measurement technique for radiation pattern characterisation of embedded wireless communication system.

Loh, T H; Collett, M (2012) A rigorous measurement technique for radiation pattern characterisation of embedded wireless communication system. In: Progress in Electromagnetics Research Symposium 2012 (PIERS 2012), 27-30 March 2012, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a huge proliferation of wireless communication systems such as mobile phone handsets and wireless sensor network (WSN) platform to meet existing and future demands for compact size design, higher data rates and more capacity. Electronic components, antennas and devices embedded within wireless system are continually decreasing in size, resulting in highly complex structure and are operating in close proximity. However, the casing, mounting and nearby objects can have a significant effect upon the antenna radiation pattern, which cause deviation of the antenna performance from the ideal, and can lead to unexpected communications performance. Furthermore, when testing a prototype antenna, a coaxial feed cable is often being employed even though such cable may not be present in the final design of the wireless communication system and, for a poorly balanced antenna, can result in common mode that distort the true radiation pattern of the antenna under test. There is increasing need to understand the performance of whole wireless communication systems, and gives advices for those deploying wireless sensing systems. This makes the testing of whole systems and configurations necessary despite the measurement challenge that the embedded radios within these systems are often only capable of emitting a modulated, bursty, and intermittent signal.

Accurate radiation pattern characterisation for wireless communication system requires a rigorous measurement technique within a refelctionless environment. In this paper, we present and validate a rigorous measurement technique carried out at the UK National Physical Laboratory for radiation pattern characterisation of wireless communication system, which is based upon a single receiving antenna connected to a spectrum analyser. A pattern measuring process that is robust to modulated and bursty signals is presented and validated against a traditional vector network analyser (VNA)-based pattern measuring method using a known electrically small dielectric resonator antenna, fed by a signal generator with a continuous wave and then an emulated Bluetooth signal. It was found that this method shows good agreement with traditional VNA-based radiation pattern measurement techniques. Following the rigorous assessment of the technique it is then applied to a commonly employed WSN platform, the MICAz and the measurement repeatability investigated. The good repeatability results have clearly demonstrated that the proposed technique is robust to modulated and bursty signals emitted from the wireless communication systems.

Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item (UNSPECIFIED)
Subjects: Electromagnetics
Electromagnetics > Wireless Communications
Last Modified: 02 Feb 2018 13:14
URI: http://eprintspublications.npl.co.uk/id/eprint/5456

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item