In this project, we designed a compact near-field antenna measurement system for experimental purposes. Our system comprises of a positioner with a probe antenna, an antenna under test (AUT), a vector network analyzer (VNA), and a PC. The PC sends position commands to the positioner over USB/UART. The PC also sends measurement commands to the VNA. The VNA sends an analog RF signal through a wire to the probe antenna which transmits the same signal wirelessly to the AUT. The VNA measures the signal received by the AUT. The VNA then sends the measurement data to the PC. To complete this project, we utilized several different hardware components, such as linear rails, stepper motors, and a VNA provided by J. J. Pickle Research Campus. In addition, our project consisted of several software challenges, including designing our own state machine in Arduino, integrating an existing VNA library into our system, and data collection via Python.

Team Members

Jacob Dach
Jason Fry
Do Won Kim
Tom Li
Alex Riehm
Matthew Withey