The wireless industry is such that suppliers of antennas have to adapt their designs to requirement changes over a period of just a few months. In these short design cycles time is crucial. Radiation pattern testing of the antennas at various points in this design cycle are nowadays mostly done using spherical near-field techniques, where the tangential electric field is acquired over an imaginary sphere close to, and surrounding, the antenna under test, and this data then transformed into a far-zone radiation pattern. There are some applications where acquisition over a rotationally symmetric surface other than a spherical one would not only reduce test times, but allow equipment cost reductions as well. However, near-field to far-field transformations for finite non-spherical measurement surface shapes are not available. Such a transformation is proposed, implemented and validated in this thesis. It uses the method of moments, customized to a rotationally symmetric surface (body of revolution) to effect this transformation.

This thesis focuses on the application of electromagnetic inverse source techniques to characterize antennas using phaseless (amplitude-only) near-field (NF) measurement data. Removing the need to measure phase reduces the overall cost of the measurement apparatus since simple power meters can be used instead of expensive vector network analyzers. It has also been shown in the literature that a phaseless approach can improve the accuracy of the calculated far-field (FF) pattern in the presence of probe positioning errors compared to the amplitude-and-phase approach. A brief discussion on the state-of-the-art methods for characterizing antennas using phaseless near-field measurement data is presented. Two general approaches used most often to perform near-field to far-field (NF-FF) transformations, namely modal expansion and source reconstruction, are explained in detail for scenarios with and without phase information. A phaseless source reconstruction method (SRM) is the primary focus of this work. The SRM is an application of an electromagnetic inverse source technique and therefore, the complexities of solving the associated ill-posed inverse source problem are discussed. The application of the SRM to spherical and planar measurement geometries are presented along with the concerns regarding regularization resulting from discretizing the ill-posed system. A multiplicative regularization (MR) scheme originally developed for inverse scattering is adapted to suit the nonlinear cost functional for the phaseless planar measurement case and the mathematical framework is derived in detail. The resulting MR-SRM is fully automated and incorporates adaptive regularization. The developed algorithms are evaluated using several examples with synthetic phaseless NF data demonstrating the benefits and limitations of the source reconstruction method and the multiplicative regularization scheme. The application of the SRM to antenna diagnostics using phaseless NF data is also shown. Finally, the developed planar algorithms are tested with experimentally collected phaseless measurement data to demonstrate their potential as suitable antenna characterization techniques that can be of interest to the antenna measurement community. / October 2016

Les paramètres radioélectriques des satellites sont actuellement mesurés directement, à l’aide d’une base compacte. Cependant, les li-mites de ces bases sont atteintes à cause de l’augmentation des dimensions des satellites, du nombre et de la complexité des antennes qu’ils comportent.Les techniques de champ proche constituent une solution prometteuse sous la forme de base pla-naire. Ces techniques consistent à mesurer le champ rayonné à proximité de la source pour en déduire, par traitement mathématique, le champ à grande distance.Ce travail de thèse porte sur l’adaptation des techniques de champ proche au test des satellites de télécommunications. La caractérisation du rayonnement des antennes par ces techniques estaujourd’hui largement utilisée. Toutefois, un développement théorique doit être complété et des méthodes de mesures proposées pour le test de l’ensemble des paramètres de la charge utile. Des difficultés spécifiques liées à la fonction du satellite (transpondeur) et à l’accès limité aux antennes et à l’électronique du satellite doivent être prise en compte dans la mise en oeuvre de ces méthodes de mesure.Enfin les mesures en champ proche sont affectées par plusieurs causes d’erreurs. L’identification des sources de ces erreurs et l’évaluation de leurs contributions au résultat final constituent une partie importante du travail de thèse. L’étude globale permet de dimensionner un système de mesure complet bénéficiant d’un bon niveau d’optimisation. / Nowadays, the radioelectric charac-teristics of satellites are directly measured by means of a com-pact range basis. However, the limits of these bases are affected by the growth of the satellite dimensions, in addition to the number and the complexity of the integrated an-tennas.On the other hand, near field techniques formed a promising solution under the planar range form. These techniques consist of measuring the radiated field near the source and accordingly deduce the far field by the means of mathemati-cal analysis.The purpose of this thesis is to adapt near field techniques for testing telecommunication satel-lites. In fact, these techniques are widelyused for antenna pattern measurements. However, a theoretical development has to be completed and measurement methods need to be proposed for testing all payload parameters. Unfortunately, specific difficulties related to the satellite function (transponder) and the limited access to antennas and satellite electronics have to be taken into account in the implementation of these measurement methodologies.Finally, the near field measurements are affected by many causes of errors. The identification of the error sources and the evaluation of their contribution to the final results constitute an important part of the thesis work. The global study allows dimensioning a complete measurement system with a good optimization.

Durante la última década, los métodos de optimización heurísticos basados en imitar a nivel computacional procesos naturales, biológicos, sociales o culturales, han despertado el interés de la comunidad científica debido a su capacidad para explorar eficientemente espacios de soluciones multimodales y multidimensionales. En este ámbito, esta tesis aborda el desarrollo, análisis y puesta a punto de diferentes métodos de optimización tradicionales y heurísticos. En concreto, se considera un método de búsqueda local basado en símplex y varios métodos heurísticos, tales como el recocido simulado, los algoritmos genéticos y la optimización con enjambre de partículas. Para estos dos últimos algoritmos se investigan diferentes esquemas con el objetivo de superar las limitaciones propias de los esquemas clásicos.La puesta a punto de los diferentes métodos de optimización se realiza considerando como problema de referencia la caracterización de la radiación de antenas a partir de medidas en campo próximo sobre geometría plana, utilizando un método de transformación de campo cercano a campo lejano basado en corrientes equivalentes. Para cada método de optimización se incluye un análisis paramétrico, en los casos en los que se ha considerado necesario, así como resultados de transformación de campo teóricos obtenidos para diferentes antenas de apertura y antenas de bocina piramidal. Los resultados de un estudio comparativo, realizado utilizando fuentes teóricas y medidas, demuestran la utilidad del método y permiten concluir que la optimización con enjambre de partículas es el algoritmo que proporciona las mejores prestaciones para esta aplicación.Los métodos de optimización desarrollados e investigados en este trabajo han sido también aplicados a otros problemas como son la síntesis de agrupaciones lineales o el modelado de fuente en aplicaciones de compatibilidad electromagnética. / For the last decade, heuristic optimization methods based on imitating natural, biological, social or cultural processes in a computational way have aroused great interest among the scientific community, due to its ability to explore efficiently multimodal and high-dimension solution spaces. On this basis, this thesis tackles the development, analysis and tuning of different traditional and heuristic optimization methods. In short, a local search method based on simplex and several heuristic methods, such as simulated annealing, genetic algorithms and particle swarm optimization are considered. For these last two algorithms different schemes are investigated so as to overcome the typical limitations of classical schemes.The tuning of the optimization methods is carried out considering as a reference problem the antenna radiation characterization from near-field measurements over a planar geometry, using a near-field to far-field transformation method based on equivalent currents. A parametric analysis is included for each optimization method, in those cases in which it has been considered necessary, as well as theoretical field transformation results obtained with aperture and pyramidal horn antennas. Results of a comparative study, carried out using theoretical sources and measurements, demonstrate the usefulness of the method and make it possible to conclude that the particle swarm optimization is the algorithm that provides the best performance for this application.The optimization methods developed and investigated in this work have also been applied to other problems, such as the synthesis of linear arrays or the source modelling in electromagnetic compatibility applications.