An Overview of the Potential of Compressed Sensing in Antenna Measurements

Compressed sensing (CS) is a method that reconstructs a desired parameter with fewer measurements than usually required, assuming the parameter is sparse or compressible. The technique has found great popularity and application in various fields. In antenna measurements as well, several applications enable or at least show potential for the use of CS. In the spherical near-field to far-field transformation based on the spherical wave expansion, the radiation of an antenna under test is first represented in terms of spherical mode coefficients. These coefficients are sparse or compressible, allowing CS to retrieve them from fewer measurements. Moreover, in antenna array diagnosis, CS can be used to retrieve defective excitations of array elements. A compressible representation is achieved through an array element's excitation comparison between an array under test and a reference array. This paper summarizes implementations and investigations of current research on the above applications.