Measurement of anechoic chamber reflections by

time-domain techniques
E.N. Clouston
P.A. Langsford
S. Evans

Indexing terms: Antennas, Antennas (measurements), Antennas (time domain)

Abstract: Anechoic chamber reflection levels, as

much as 50dB down, can be measured at frequencies up to a few gigahertz, with broadband
information derived from a single time-domain
measurement. The technique has an advantage
over frequency-domain methods because it can
separate different reflections from each other,
allowing any particular area of the walls to be
studied in detail. The source of a particular reflection can be identified by its distance from the
antennas, as well as direction, so that improvements can be made to the absorber arrangement.
1

found by moving one or both of the antennas and measuring the change in path length.
1.2 The time-domain system
The equipment required for receiving time-domain waveforms is comparatively complicated, and the system used
[6] is shown in Fig. 1. The pulse generator uses an avalanche transistor and a step-recovery diode [7] to
10 m

I-

reflected

i t

Introduction

1.1 Anechoic chambers

The reflectivity of an anechoic chamber can be defined as

the ratio of the unwanted signal (reflected from the walls),
to the much larger signal transmitted directly between
two antennas. As it will depend on the antenna positions
and radiation patterns, a measurement of the reflectivity
must take account of the arrangement which will normally be used in that chamber.
The conventional, frequency-domain approach [1, 23
involves measuring the interference pattern as one of the
antennas is moved. Reflections from many sources interfere not only with the direct signal, but also with each
other, so careful scanning of the whole of the required
quiet zone is needed, to be sure that the worst case has
been measured. If a reflection from a particular direction
is dominant, that direction can be found.
Time-domain techniques [3, 4, 51 make it possible to
separate a particular reflection from the direct signal and,
by appropriate antenna positioning, from the rest of the
reflections. The transmitted signal is a short pulse, which
dies away quickly so that the reflections do not arrive
until after the direct signal has finished. The confusion
caused by interference is greatly reduced because a reflection can interfere only with others of the same path
length. The distance to its source is easily derived from its
delay in a single measurement. The direction can be
Paper 5885H (Ell), first received 20th August, and in revised form 11th
November 1987
E.N. Clouston and S. Evans are with Cambridge University Engineering Department, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 lPZ, United
Kingdom
P.A. Langsford is with the Antennas Division, Marconi Research
Centre, West Hanningfield Road, Chelmsford, Essex CM2 8HN, United
Kingdom
IEE PROCEEDINGS, Vol. 135, Pt. H , N o . 2, A P R l L 1988

samp I in g

trigger

d a t a recorder

microcomputer
J

produce an 18 V pulse into 50 Q with a risetime of 90 ps,

a pulsewidth of 170 ps, and a trailing edge dropping to
more that 40 dB down within 3 ns. The generator is triggered every 70 ps. The Tektronix 7603 sampling oscilloscope is used with an S6 sampling head which produces a
noise level of 5 mV peak to peak. A purpose-built data
recorder digitises the oscilloscope output to 12 bits. For
these measurements, it was used to take the average of
2" consecutive readings at each of 2'' points across the
93

screen, thus reducing the noise level to less than 0.15 mV.
The data is stored on floppy disc before any computer
processing.
A receiver preamplifier can be used to improve the
signal to noise ratio, but the sampling head is linear only
up to f 1 V. An Avantek AMT 2004M (0.1 to 2 GHz)
amplifier was used because of its short pulse response.
Although almost all the reflections were expected in
the first 50 ns, a record of 100 ns was taken, to be sure of
including everything. The reflections in the cables, from
the SMA connectors and whatever is connected to them,
are by no means negligible when we are looking for
chamber reflections which may be 40 or 50 dB down. So
continuous semi-rigid coaxial cables, with no sharp bends
in them, were connected to the antennas. These
unwanted reflections are delayed by 50 ns before they
reach the other end of the cable and then, once reflected
there, have to travel another 50 ns back again, so they
cannot confuse the measurement until 10011s after the
direct pulse. This time-gating means that inconsistent
connections cause no errors, and the antennas do not
have to be well matched. But the antenna pulse response
must be short.
2

level. The noise was 50 dB down at 1 GHz, but only

42 dB at 2 GHz, and this is a limit on the lowest reflectivity which can be measured. Although it could be

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Measurement of overall reflectivity

2,l Antennas
The system was used in the new cylindrical near-field test
facility at the Marconi Research Centre [8]. The chamber
is designed for the antenna under test to rotate about a
vertical axis while a probe moves on a vertical line beside
it. The effect is to measure the near-field over a cylindrical surface, so the technique requires the power radiated to the floor and ceiling, which is not measured, to be
small.
To give omnidirectional illumination of the walls
without rotating, a 'discone' antenna [9] was used in
place of the antenna under test. It consists of a cone of
internal half-angle 47" above a flat, circular ground plane.
This maintains an impedance of 50 R from the feed at the
apex until 0.3m away, where the cone and the ground
plane both end. The reflections from the apex were 27 dB
down, minimised empirically by observing them in the
time-domain, and adjusting the height of the cone above
the ground plane. The antenna was matched to VSWR
1.5 from 0.7 to 4.4 GHz.
The probe should be directional, facing the antenna
under test, so a printed TEM horn [lo] was used for
that. It starts off as microstrip and maintains an impedance of 50 R as it flares out. It was matched to VSWR 2
from 0.6 to 4.0 GHz.
With the antennas 6.0 m above the floor and 2.3 m
apart, the received waveform is shown in Fig. 2a. The
earliest possible reflections were delayed at least 17 ns
after the start of the direct pulse so, for analysis, the
record was divided at the 17 ns point to separate the
direct and reflected signals. Each was Fourier transformed (with the number of points made up to 2'' with
extra zeros) and the ratio of the reflected energy to the
directly transmitted energy is plotted in Fig. 3.

2.2 Errors
There are several sources of extra energy which mean
that this result will always be an overestimate of the
reflectivity. One is the noise. A measurement of the noise
alone showed that this measured reflectivity was only
valid from 0.25 to 2 GHz, because outside that range the
reflected signal was not significantly above the noise
94

20

-0.8

60

40
time, n s

Fig. 2
a The received time-domain waveform. The reflections could not arrive earlier
than 17 ns after the beginning of the pulse received by the direct path
b The same reflections, after high-pass filtering. Most of the energy above 1 GHz
is in a sharp pulse at 29 ns, which was identified as being reflected from the metal
behind the absorber at a poor join above the doors

-10

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m
D

i-30 -

;-40 2

-50 -

-60 I
00

Fig. 3

0 5

10

15
frequency, GHz

20

25

Chamber reflectivity; valid from 0.25 to 2 GHz

improved by using a shorter record (because the reflected

energy is almost all early on, but the noise is evenly
distributed) a better solution is to use a preamplifier. The
AMT 2004M was used to improve the signal to noise
ratio to more than 60 dB from 0.25 to 2 GHz. Measurements of the pulse response of an alternative preamplifier,
the Mini-Circuits ZHL42, suggest that it would extend
the upper limit to 4 GHz.
Reflections from bends in the delay cables can also be
superimposed on the chamber reflections. They were
measured and found to be more than 50 dB down, when
first reflected. But with at least a further 7 dB loss on
being reflected again, and 4 dB of loss due to the extra
IEE PROCEEDINGS, Vol. 135, Pt. H , No. 2, A P R I L 1988

distance tra-velled in the cable, they will all end up more

than 60 dB down on the direct signal.
The final source of extra signal is the trailing edge of
the direct pulse, including any free-space reflections from
the antennas and their cables. It was measured from 10
to 17 ns delay, before the chamber reflections start, and
was 43 dB down at 0.5 GHz, 54 dB at 1 GHz but rose
again to 47 dB at 2 GHz. This trailing edge will die away
with time, so the level superimposed on the chamber
reflections will be less than this.
Overall, the reflectivity can be measured with a
dynamic range of about 50 dB above 1 GHz, and any
errors will make the measured level larger than the actual
level, so it can safely be taken as an upper limit.
2.3 Results
The chamber specification was for a reflectivity of at least
40 dB above 1 GHz. This was the same as the manufacturer's specification for the reflection at right-angles to
the absorber, which was 18 inch except on the doors,
where it was 26 inch thick. Repeated time-domain measurements showed that the rapid variations of reflectivity
with frequency are not consistent, and can be regarded as
noise, but that averaging over 100 MHz gave consistent
results to within 3 dB. This gave a reflectivity of 32 dB at
1 GHz, whereas frequency-domain measurements, using
the free-space VSWR technique, gave 34 dB. The latter
technique tends to underestimate the reflected power,
unless measurements are made in three perpendicular
directions and the worst possible reflection is taken as the
voltage sum of all three. Changes were later made to the
absorber above the doors and a repeat of the VSWR
measurements gave an improved reflectivity of 41 dB.
3

Reflections from particular areas

3.I Digital filtering

After measuring the reflectivity, the next stage was to
locate the sources of reflections. In this investigation, the
antenna positions need no longer be constrained by the
normal use of the chamber, and they should ideally be
arranged so that the particularly bad reflections from different sources arrive at different times.
Because of the properties of the absorber, the reflectivity is inevitably high at low frequencies, but this
chamber will be used only at above 1 GHz. In order to
remove the large, low frequency reflections, software was
written to produce a high-pass, finite impulse response,
digital filter with a cut-off frequency of 1 GHz, which is
carefully designed not to have a significant effect on the
delay of a reflected pulse. A filtered version of the reflections is shown in Fig. 2b. It shows that most of the
energy above 1 GHz is in a sharp pulse at 29 ns delay,
which can be seen as a steep edge in the original data. It
was possible to separate this pulse from the other reflections by moving the antennas apart and away from the
doors. It moved back to 36.5 ns in Fig. 4, whereas the
unavoidable low frequency reflections from near the
centres of the walls have moved forward to around 20 ns.
The direction of the source of a reflection can be found
from its change in path length when the antennas are
moved, as long as that particular reflection can be identified in both the records. The change in delay can be measured to within 50ps if the shape does not change. The
reflection needs to be much larger than reflections at the
same path length but from other directions, and this may
be achieved by antenna positioning or, if necessary, by
filtering, as has been shown. The reflection may also
I E E PROCEEDINGS, Vol. 135, Pt. H , No. 2, A P R I L 1988

change shape if the antennas are moved too far. In the

case of a small reflector, its direction can be given to
within +lo" by moving one of the antennas in three,
40,
1

30

I O 5

i'oI'-I*

-05

time, n s

Fig. 4
(I The sharp reflection identified at 29 ns in Fig. 2b was isolated from other reflections by moving the antennas
b After filtering, it now appears at 36.5 ns, much later than the main, low frequency reflections from the absorber around the middle of the walls, around
20 ns.

orthogonal directions, requiring only four measurements.

In this investigation, the particularly sharp pulse was
found to come from an area around the top of the doors.
In general, the high frequency power would be expected
to arrive at a far wider range of delays.
3.2 Subtraction of the direct signal
The reflectivity measurement can be used only in chambers larger than a cube of side 5 m, so that the reflections
do not arrive for at least 10 ns after the start of the direct
signal. Unless the length of the antennas' pulse response
can be reduced, the technique has to be modified for
chambers smaller than that. If the two antennas are fixed
relative to each other, the signal transmitted directly
between them is kept constant. It can be measured in an
empty space larger than the chamber in question, and
that record can be subtracted from subsequent records,
to leave only the reflections.
Even in a large chamber, this subtraction technique
can be useful. Reflections from a particular area can be
separated from the other reflections by moving the
antennas close to it, because it does not matter if they
overlap the trailing edge of the direct signal. The ability
to differentiate between adjacent sources of reflection is
also improved by bringing the antennas close to them. So
two TEM horns were mounted rigidly on a wooden
beam, 2 m apart (Fig. 5), and the direct signal was measured with them in the middle of the chamber. This
arrangement gives no reflections for 30 ns. A metal plate
was placed at several, measured distances in front of
these horns, to check the accuracy of path lengths calculated from the delay of the reflections. They were within
f5 cm. The time base of the oscilloscope drifts with time,
so when the previously measured direct signal is subtracted, the two records have to be aligned carefully to
95

get the best cancellation, and it does leave some errors in

the subtraction as well as the reflected signals. We were
interested in reflections above 1 GHz, so the waveform
reflector

an ellipsoidal surface which passes 2.85 m in front of the

antennas, which corresponds to the back corners of the
lintel absorber. The reflections at about 18 ns come from
the absorber on the doors as well, but the main reflection
2

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coax i a I
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The two T E M horn antennas, rigidly mounted on a wooden

Fig. 5
beam to keep the direct signal constant

after subtraction was also high-pass filtered, which helped

to reduce the residual direct signal.
Fig. 6a shows the received waveform with the metal
plate, 3.04 m in front of the wooden beam, producing a

'-30
5

10

15
20
time. n s

25

30

Fig. 6
The received waveform, using the two TEM horns, with a metal plate deliberately producing a reflection at 15 ns
b The same reflection, picked out by subtraction of the direct signal and high-pass
filtering
a

clear pulse at a delay of about 15 ns after the beginning

of the direct pulse. Fig. 6b shows this pulse picked out by
subtraction and filtering, and the peak of the envelope is
found to be at 14.8 f 0.1 ns delay. This predicts a path
length of 6.44 f 0.03 m and the actual length was
6.40 f 0.02 m.
The antennas were then hung at the height of the top
of the doors with the wooden beam 2.50m away from
the tips of the absorber on the lintel. The processed
reflections are shown in Fig. 7b. The first reflection
occurs after a delay of 13.5 ns, after the residual direct
signal has died away,. and it comes from somewhere on
96

1
0

10

15

20

25

30

time. ns
a The received signal with the TEM horns near the top of the chamber doors
b The reflections from the top of the doors, after subtraction and filtering. The
signal before 10 ns is due to errors in the subtraction of the direct signal. (Note the
change of scale from Fig. 6b)

10

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Fig. 7

400 -

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does not arrive until after 20 ns, or 3.9 m in front of the

antennas. Measurements from other positions showed
that the reflections from the absorber at this path length
die away, because of the oblique angle of incidence. The
actual source was identified as being the metalwork on
the outside of the chamber, at the back of the door. It
was not completely covered at the join between the
absorber at the top of the door and the absorber on the
underside of the lintel. With different antenna positions, a
comparison was made between the reflected energy levels
from these different areas.
This subtraction technique has the small disadvantage
of requiring computer processing before the reflections
can be analysed; furthermore care has to be taken that
the antennas do not move relative to each other. But it
can be extended further, to separate the components of
the reflections in a particular direction. The antennas are
moved a short distance between records, and the first
record is subtracted from the second. Signals from perpendicular to the direction of the movement do not
change, and cancel out.
4

Conclusion

As well as giving the overall reflectivity of an anechoic

chamber, the time-domain technique can give a picture of
where the worst reflections come from with only four
measurements. Because the antennas could be positioned
quite freely in this chamber, by being suspended from the
ceiling, reflections from any particular area could be
separated out by moving the antennas close to it. The
component of these reflections from a particular direction
can also be isolated, by subtraction, so that any area of
high reflectivity can be located and improved.
Although the equipment required is more complicated,
the time-domain approach considerably simplifies the
IEE PROCEEDINGS, Vol. 135, Pt. H , No. 2, A P R I L 1988

experimental procedure and gives a real-time display of

the reflections. It has a more limited dynamic range and
frequency range than conventional techniques, but it provides extra information. The source of any reflection, not
just the largest, can be identified by its distance as well as
its direction from the antennas. Because the chamber
reflectivity can be measured without moving the antennas
at all, this technique also makes it possible to measure
reflectivity as a function of antenna position and it provides a safe overestimate of the reflected power.
5

Acknowledgment

The research was sponsored by the SERC and Marconi

Research Ltd. under a CASE award.
6

References

1 APPEL-HANSEN, J.: Reflectivity level of radio anechoic chambers, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., 1973, AP-21, (4), pp. 49Ck

2 CRAWFORD, M.L.: Evaluation of reflectivity level of anechoic

chambers using isotropic, three-dimensional probing, IEEE AP-S
Int. Symp. Digest, 1974, pp. 28-34
3 NICOLSON, A.M., BENNETT, C.L., LAMENSDORF, D., and
SUSMAN, L.: Applications of time-domain metrology to the
automation of broad-band microwave measurements, IEEE Trans.
Microwave Theory Tech., 1972, MTT-20, (l),pp. 3-9
4 BENNETT, C.L., and ROSS, G.F.: Time domain electromagnetics
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6 READER, H.C. : Time domain techniques for antenna analysis,
PhD Dissertation, Cambridge University Engineering Dept., 1985
7 Hewlett-Packard application note 918: Pulse and waveform generation with step-recovery diodes, 1968
8 LANGSFORD, P.A., and HAYES, M.J.C.: A new cylindrical nearfield test facility. IEE Fifth Int. Conference Antennas and Propagation, ICAP87, (l), pp. 363-365
9 HARRISON, C.W., and WILLIAMS, C.S.: Transients in wideangle conical antennas, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., 1965,
AP-13, (3), pp. 236246
10 EVANS, S., and KONG, F.N.: TEM horn antenna: input reflection
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