Improved clutter removal for measuring wall reflectivity using the RCS technique

Absorber lining is an important part of an indoor antenna measurement chamber design. During the design phase different absorber types are selected for minimizing the expected reflection from given locations in the chamber. By the time of installation, these absorbers have already been measured as part of the production quality control. The question however arises if after installation, these absorbers still meet the requirements of the design. The free-space-VSWR measurement technique is a method to assess the overall reflectivity of the chamber at a certain location, i.e. quiet-zone reflectivity, but cannot be easily limited to measure the reflectivity of a single wall. In this work the RCS technique is revised. The reflection of the wall is measured using a quasi-monostatic RCS setup which is mounted on a linear sliding system. The linear sliding system is positioned perpendicular to the wall. After measuring at several positions the measurement results are shifted in time during post processing such that the reference target or wall add constructively and clutter or other walls destructively. Using this technique it will be shown that the reflectivity of an absorber-lined wall can be determined during installation where not all walls or floor have been covered yet.