Reconstructing Distortions on Reflector Antennas With the Iterative-Field-Matrix Method Using Near-Field Observation Data

Abstract

This work extends the mathematical formulation of the iterative-field-matrix method for observed data from the near-field region of a Perfect Electric Conductor. The method is used as a diagnosis tool for reflector antennas, to determine the positions and extent of distortions from their idealized shapes. The new formulation is tested on a reflector antenna with several significant bumps, and excellent results are achieved. This work also presents an example where the Method of Moments is used to generate the synthetic data and the inversion is performed using Physical Optics. Such a configuration ensures that the forward model is unbiased with respect to the inversion model, demonstrating that the new formulation is also robust for these realistic scenarios.