Flexible Setups Based on a Novel Probe Selection Method for MIMO OTA Testing

Multi-probe anechoic chamber (MPAC) is a widely used over the air (OTA) solution due to its advantage of controllability of channel environment reconstruction. In MPAC, it is meaningful to use a small number of probes in order to save the cost of hardware resources. This paper presents a new probe selection algorithm called the sparrow search algorithm (SSA) to obtain the angular positions and weights of the OTA probes. Simulation results show that the proposed probe configuration algorithm offers good channel emulation accuracy in terms of spatial correlation in the test area.