Sunday Short Course

An Introduction to Modern Compact Antenna Test Ranges

Sunday, October 15 | 8:00 am–5:00 pm

Presenters:

Anil Tellakula

NSI-MI Technologies

Jeff Fordham

NSI-MI Technologies

Marion Baggett

NSI-MI Technologies

Stephen Blalock

NSI-MI Technologies

Steve Nichols

NSI-MI Technologies

Daniël Janse van Rensburg

NSI-MI Technologies

This course will provide an introduction to all aspects of modern compact antenna test range measurements including an introduction to antennas, far-field antenna measurements, compact ranges, scattering measurements and radome testing including an introduction to some of the most recent developments in post-processing and error correction techniques.

This one day short course is intended for researchers, practicing engineers and technicians who want to obtain a better understanding of antenna measurement concepts, theory and techniques.


Course Outline


  1. Fundamentals of Antenna Measurement Theory and CATRs

    1. Introduction to antenna measurements
    2. Far-Field antenna measurements
    3. Principle of the CATR
    4. Approaches to EM collimation
    5. How does a CATR work
    6. CATR measurements
  2. Part I Implementation of CATRs

    1. Summary of types of CATRs
    2. CATR Feeds
  3. Part II Implementation of CATRs

    1. RF Subsystems
    2. Positioners for antenna pattern measurements
    3. Installation
    4. Absorber treatments in CATR chambers
    5. Screening
    6. HVAC
    7. Selection and specification of CATRs
  4. CATR Design and Manufacture

    1. Feed design and feed performance requirements & prediction
    2. Use of CEM Simulation in Design and manufacture of CATR QZ
    3. Blended rolled edge versus serrated edge – top level
    4. QZ probing
    5. Factors that limit low frequency performance – CEM simulation illustration
    6. Factors that limit high frequency performance – CEM simulation illustration
    7. Alignment – CEM simulation illustration
    8. CATR specifications – what are the specs, what do they mean and what do they include! – CEM simulation illustration
  5. Applications

    1. RCS and ISAR imaging
    2. Satellite Testing
    3. Radome Measurements using CATRs
  6. Advanced CATR topics

    1. Uncertainty analysis for a CATR
    2. Advanced Antenna Pattern Correction (AAPC)
    3. FF-MARS
    4. Aperture diagnostics
    5. Extension to prediction of measured antenna patterns

Anil Tellakula

Anil Tellakula is a Senior Applications Engineer at NSI-MI. He provides technical leadership and support to the sales, business, and engineering teams. Anil was the primary designer of several reflectors which have all been manufactured, installed, and tested successfully.

He has significant experience in using metrology equipment, such as the Laser Tracker and Laser Radar, for reflector surface evaluation as well as to align and install the various sub-systems of compact range systems. He has significant experience in installing and aligning compact range systems, as well as near-field and far-field systems for antenna measurements.

In addition to his Compact Range Reflector work, he has successfully designed various complex mechanical systems for hardware-in-the-loop simulation systems for missile testing. He has also developed mechanical systems for testing commercial and military aircraft radomes.

Anil worked at HVS Technologies as a Project Manager & Engineer. At HVS, he gained more than 10 years of experience in diverse fields such as project management, mechanical design and automation, electromagnetic test and measurement systems, instrumentation, and software development. He was instrumental in conceptualizing and designing automated systems for electromagnetic characterization of materials at up to 110 GHz. Anil holds a Master of Science Degree in Engineering Science from the Pennsylvania State University and a Bachelor of Engineering Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Bangalore University, India.


Anil Tellakula

Jeff Fordham

Jeff Fordham is Vice-President, Business Development of NSI-MI.

Jeff has years of experience in the design and evaluation of antennas and systems, working with such organizations as the Georgia Tech Research Institute’s Electromagnetic Environmental Effects Laboratory and EMS Technologies Inc., before joining Scientific-Atlanta Inc. in 1996 and subsequently NSI-MI after the company was formed in 1997.

Jeff’s primary management and design experiences have been in the areas of spacecraft antennas, millimeter wave aircraft antennas, tracking and communication ground station systems, antenna measurement instrumentation, and electromagnetic analysis of radiating apertures and components.

Jeff is active in a number of industry and community service organizations. He has been a member of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society and the Microwave Theory and Techniques Society since 1987. He also served as Chapter Chair for the Atlanta Chapter, Antennas and Propagation/Microwave Theory and Techniques Society in 2001. He is a member of the Antenna Measurements Techniques Association and served on the AMTA Board of Directors as the Host of the AMTA 2004 Symposium.

Jeff holds a Master of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering, both from Georgia Institute of Technology. He has authored and presented papers at various conferences including, AMTA and EuCAP. He has published additional articles and technical papers in Antennas and Propagation Magazine, Antenna Systems & Technology and other journals.


Jeff Fordham

Marion Baggett

Marion C. Baggett is an Applications and Systems Engineer at NSI-MI. This group includes engineers responsible for customer applications development and systems engineering.

During previous service at Scientific-Atlanta, Marion spent ten years with the Microwave and Radar Cross-Section Instrumentation products from 1984 through 1994. Marion’s engineering and management career includes twenty years with Scientific-Atlanta and ViaSat, Inc. in the tracking systems, microwave instrumentation, radar cross-section and satellite gateway product lines. From 1982 through 2000, Marion held various staff engineer and management positions at Scientific-Atlanta, including participating in the founding of the radar cross-section product group in 1984. Among his assignments were Manager of RCS Software Engineering, Staff Engineer in Microwave Products and Staff Engineer in Satellite Ground Systems. During the period from 1994 through 2000, Marion was initially the lead software engineer and later project engineer for the Iridium Earth Terminals. In 2000, ViaSat, Inc. purchased the Satellite Ground Systems group from Scientific-Atlanta. At ViaSat, Marion was Manager of Satellite Ground System Software Engineering and a Principal Engineer for the company.

Marion is a Senior Member of the Antenna Measurement Techniques Association (AMTA), a member of IEEE and is also a registered Professional Engineer. Marion has been a member of the AMTA student paper evaluation committee for the last 8 years. He has authored or co-authored 14 technical publications in the areas of microwave measurements.

Marion holds a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering Degree and Master of Science in Electrical Engineering Degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He also holds a Master of Science in Engineering Management from the University of Alabama in Huntsville.


Marion Baggett

Stephen Blalock

Stephen Blalock is Vice-President, Engineering of NSI-MI. In this role, he oversees all engineering activity for the development of sophisticated measurement systems. The company’s engineering department is responsible for the design, integration, verification, and deployment of advanced microwave measurement systems used for characterizing antennas and radomes from the UHF to millimeter wave frequency regimes. Stephen is responsible for the electrical, mechanical, software and project engineering activity needed to bring these systems to market.

Stephen has more than 20 years of experience in antenna, radar signature, and materials characterization using a variety of test systems including compact range, free space and resonant cavity materials measurement apparatus, image plane antenna range, and farfield antenna ranges. In addition to system development and operation, he lectured for a Radar Cross Section Reduction short course for 12 years and developed a hands-on compact range laboratory as part of the capstone to the short course.

Stephen is a vetted reviewer for the National Radar Cross Section Measurement Facility Certification program. This national level program consists of national experts who review and certify the nation’s premier radar signature measurement ranges.

Stephen holds a Master’s degree in Applied Systems Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology as well as a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering Technology from the Southern Polytechnic State University.


Daniel Janse van Rensburg

Steve Nichols

Steven R. Nichols is the Manager of Applications and Systems Engineering at NSI-MI. He was named to this position in July 2014 after having served as the Manager of Product Engineering for 11 years, where he led the development of the company’s new microwave measurement system architecture and a new line of instrumentation products that compose the system.

Steve has over 30 years of experience in engineering design and technical management, much of it spent advancing the state of the art in antenna, radar cross section, and radome measurement instrumentation and systems at both NSI-MI and as part of the Microwave Instrumentation Division of Scientific Atlanta. He also served as Director of R&D for Satellite Networks for several years, managing product development for telephony and data VSAT systems, and he continued in this role after the business was sold to ViaSat.

Steve is currently serving his fourth year on the Board of Directors for the Antenna Measurement Techniques Association. He is also a Senior Member of the IEEE and has served on the Board of Directors for the IEEE Atlanta section.

Steve received a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, graduating with highest honors. He has also published several technical papers on antenna measurement topics and has given presentations as an invited speaker at industry events, including AMTA, ATMS India, and EuCAP.


Steve Nichols

Daniël Janse van Rensburg

Dr. Daniël Janse van Rensburg is CTO of NSI-MI Technologies. He was named to this position in 2016 following the merger of NSI and MI Technologies. Daniel brings 25 years of RF measurement experience in the aerospace industry. He has worked extensively on antenna, radome and radar cross-section applications, spanning both far-field and near-field techniques.

He received the B.Eng (cum laude), M.Eng and Ph.D degrees in Electrical Engineering in 1985, 1987 & 1991 respectively, from the University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa after which he was appointed Associate Professor in the department of Electrical Engineering. He joined the Canadian Space Agency in Ottawa, Canada as Research Engineer in 1994 and in 1996 he was appointed as Senior Member of Technical Staff at COMDEV in Cambridge, ON, Canada. He joined NSI in 1998 as Applications Engineer and in 2001 assumed the role of Sales Manager.

He remains actively involved in academia and was appointed as Adjunct Professor in the School of Information Technology and Engineering (SITE), University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada in 2005 where he provides post graduate student supervision. He is the author of more than 60 journal and conference papers, regularly contributes to industry courses on near-field test technology and is co-author of the IET text: Theory & Practice of Modern Antenna Range Measurements, which was published in 2014.

His research interests include near-field test methods, measurement uncertainty analysis and the coupling of measurement and computational techniques. He is a Fellow of the Antenna Measurement Techniques Association (AMTA), served on the AMTA Board of Directors from 2007 – 2010 and as President in 2009. He received an Outstanding Service award from the AMTA in 2009 and received the AMTA Distinguished Achievement Award in 2015. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and Licensed Professional Engineer in Ontario, Canada.


Daniel Janse van Rensburg

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