Radiation Physics allows Ten-fold Optimization of UAV Near-Field Scanning

This paper presents the first implementation of an optimum flying path for UAV-based Near-Field Antenna Measurements. The path is obtained solving the Travelling Salesperson Problem on a set of waypoints determined with a truncated Column Pivoting QR factorization of the matrix given by the discretization of the radiation operator. The optimum flight has been implemented on a non-tethered small octocopter showing approximately a 10-times reduction of the path length (and duration) with respect to a regular raster with half-wavelength spacing. The phase information has been retrieved using a dual-polarized reference antenna and a multi-channel acquisition system. The measured results are in agreement with simulated data.