Effective Plane Wave Generator Based on Reference Field Shaping Using Super-Gaussian Distribution

For over-the-air testing of base station antenna systems, a plane wave generator (PWG) offers the advantages of a low-cost and compact setup. To suppress radiation energy outside the quiet zone (QZ), PWG designs adopting optimization with specific conditions have recently been proposed. In this letter, we present a PWG approach that provides effective plane wave synthesis based on reference field shaping without imposing any conditions, which can reduce computational complexity. Here, we use a super-Gaussian distribution as the reference field to calculate the optimal excitation coefficients, and the effectiveness of the proposed approach is verified via simulation and measurement. The overall results demonstrate that by inherently taking advantage of super-Gaussian distribution, stable QZ performance can be achieved while simply avoiding unwanted field intensity outside the QZ.