Antenna Deembedding in Directional Channel Measurements With Virtual Array Concept and Experimental Validation

Directional scanning sounding (DSS), where a directional antenna centered at the rotation table is mechanically rotated to record the channel spatial profile directly, is the most popular channel sounding scheme at the millimeter and sub-Terahertz (sub-THz) frequency bands (e.g., from 30 to 300 GHz), largely due to the high gain, low cost, and simplicity offered by the DSS system. However, the employed directional antenna pattern will be inherently embedded in the radio channels, leading to distorted measured spatial profiles. State-of-the-art antenna deembedding strategies typically necessitate knowledge of the complex radiation pattern of the employed directional antenna, which is challenging at high-frequency bands. In this work, a novel antenna deembedding strategy based on the virtual array concept is proposed. The proposed solution only requires the gain pattern of the employed antenna, and can be implemented with the same measurement system as for DSS, thus highly attractive in practice. The proposed method is experimentally validated at 100 GHz using corrugated and horn antennas in a large indoor hall scenario.