Total Radiated Power Measurements of a mmWave Phased Array in a Reverberation Chamber

TL;DR

This work demonstrates that total radiated power (TRP) measurements of mmWave phased arrays in a reverberation chamber can be analyzed with sound statistical methods. It verifies the exponential nature of received power in a well-stirred RC, characterizes the effective number of independent samples $N_{eff}$ as a function of sampling strategy, and assesses beam-wise TRP differences using $95\%$ confidence intervals for various subsampling schemes. The results show that, for the majority of beams, TRP differences are not statistically significant, indicating consistent performance across beams, while maintaining awareness of sampling-related uncertainty via $N_{eff}$. These findings support RC-based TRP evaluation as an efficient and reliable approach for mmWave phased arrays in high-frequency applications.

Abstract

This paper explores the use of reverberation chambers for TRP measurements of beamformed radiation by phased arrays at mmWave frequencies. First, the received power was verified by the one-sample K-S GoF test to follow the exponential probability distribution. Different numbers of samples and stirrers' positions were considered. Second, we showed that the effective number of independent samples is different depending on the number of samples and stirrers' positions. Third, the beamforming TRP estimates are presented for all beams, analyzing the statistical significance of the observed differences with a selection of samplings.

Figures (2)

• Figure 1: Percentage of $N_{eff}/N_{Samp}$ for all samplings and all beams.
• Figure 2: In black, $\widehat{TRP}$ ($\bullet$) with $95\%$CI upper ($\times$) and lower ($\ast$) bounds for 600 sampling and all beams. $95\%$ lower bound of beam 11 in blue. $95\%$ upper bounds of beams 1 (yellow), 3 (green), and 18 (red).