A Phase Center Estimation Method for Automotive Antenna Measurements

Authors

  • Junhao Zheng School of Electronic and Information Engineering South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510641, China
  • Xiaoming Chen School of Information and Communication Engineering Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China
  • Chunxu Mao School of Electronic and Information Engineering South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510641, China
  • Guan-Long Huang School of Electronic and Information Engineering Foshan University, Foshan 528225, China
  • Wanji Hou Electromagnetic Compatibility Test Department of Changchun Automobile Test Center Changchun, 130103 China
  • Yuchen Ma China Academy of Information and Communications Technology Beijing 100191, China
  • Yuxin Ren China Academy of Information and Communications Technology Beijing 100191, China
  • Yi Huang Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3GJ, UK

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13052/2026.ACES.J.410202

Keywords:

Blind phase center estimation, calibration for displaced antenna, edge-scattering reduction, field projection, spatial convolution-deconvolution

Abstract

This paper presents a blind phase center estimation method for hemispherical near-field automotive antenna tests. The previous method only satisfies the less edge-scattering affected conditions, whose phase center estimation stability and accuracy are not satisfactory. While, the newly proposed method utilizes image theory as filtering process to characterize the electric fields with reduced edge-scattering effects, and the phase center is more accurately derived by the local searching strategy combined with a fast least-squares-based method along the x-, y- and z-axis. Correspondingly, the improvement of the calibrated pattern is significant. The simulation and measurement results both demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method with less time cost and better accuracy for different types of automotive antennas than the previous method. More importantly, the proposed method does not need to distinguish the edge-scattering-affected condition and non-edge-scatteringaffected condition, which will lead to an easy work for estimating the phase center and ensure the accuracy of the pattern offset calibration.

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Author Biographies

Junhao Zheng, School of Electronic and Information Engineering South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510641, China

Junhao Zheng received the B.Sc. degree in electronic information science and technology from Shandong University, Weihai, China, in 2017, the M.Sc. degree in signal and information processing from Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, in 2020, and the Ph.D. degree in electronic science and technology from Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, in 2024. His current research interests include antenna measurement in an anechoic chamber and reverberation chamber and over-the-air (OTA) testing.

Xiaoming Chen, School of Information and Communication Engineering Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China

Xiaoming Chen (Senior Member, IEEE) received the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China, in 2006, and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden, in 2007 and 2012, respectively. From 2013 to 2014, he was a Post-Doctoral Researcher with the Chalmers University of Technology. From 2014 to 2017, he was with Qamcom Research and Technology AB, Gothenburg. Since 2017, he has been a Professor with Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an. His research interests include MIMO antennas, over-the-air testing, reverberation chambers, and antenna measurements. He has published more than 200 journal articles on these topics. Chen received the IEEE Outstanding Associate Editor Awards six times from 2018 to 2023, and the International Union of Radio Science (URSI) Young Scientist Award 2017 and 2018. He was the General Chair of the IEEE International Conference on Electronic Information and Communication Technology (ICEICT) 2021. He currently serves as a Track Editor for IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters and Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation.

Chunxu Mao, School of Electronic and Information Engineering South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510641, China

Chunxu Mao (Member, IEEE) received the B.S. degree in communication engineering from the Guilin University of Electronic and Technology, Guilin, China, in 2010, the M.E. degree in RF and microwave engineering from the South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, in 2013, and the Ph.D. degree in electronic engineering from the University of Kent, Canterbury, UK, in 2018. From January 2018 to August 2019, he was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow with the Computational Electromagnetics and Antennas Research Laboratory (CEARL), The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA. In October 2019, he joined the Institute for Communication Systems (ICS), 5G/6G Innovation Center (5G/6GIC), University of Surrey, as a Senior Research Fellow. His research interests include multifunctional filtering antennas, circularly polarized antenna/array, 5G millimeter-wave antennas, wearable antennas, and metamaterial antennas. Mao serves as a Peer Reviewer of several journals, including IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, and IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters.

Guan-Long Huang, School of Electronic and Information Engineering Foshan University, Foshan 528225, China

Guan-Long Huang (Senior Member, IEEE) received the B.E. degree in electronic information engineering from the Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the National University of Singapore, Singapore. From 2011 to 2020, he was with Shenzhen University as an Associate Professor, Peng Cheng Laboratory as a Joint-Researcher, Southern University of Science and Technology as an Adjunct Lecturer, Nokia Solutions and Networks System Technology as a Senior Antenna Specialist, and Temasek Laboratories with National University of Singapore as a Research Scientist. He is currently a Distinguished Professor with Foshan University, Foshan, Guangdong, China, and the Director of Smart Antenna and Microwave & Millimeter-Wave Engineering Technology Research Centre of Foshan City. He has authored and co-authored two books and more than 200 papers in peer-reviewed journals and international conferences. He was the TPC member and special session organizer of several international conferences including APCAP-2018, ISAP-2019, ICMMT-2019/2020/2021/2022, IEEE MTT-S IMWS-AMP-2020/2021/2022, ACES-China-2021/2022. He also was the Publicity Co-Chair of ICMMT-2022. He was the recipient of the Raj Mittra Travel Grant (2021), Best Reviewer Award of IEEE AWPL (2019) and IEEE TAP (2020, 2021), all from IEEE Antenna and Propagation Society, and the recipient of the Young Scientist Award in 2021 from the Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society, Fok Ying-Tong Education Foundation Award in 2020 from the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, and the Foundation for Distinguished Young Talents in Higher Education of Guangdong Province, China in 2017. His research interests include design and implementation of high-performance antenna arrays, base-station and mobile RF front-end devices/antennas, millimeter-wave antenna, antenna measurement technique and 3-D printing technology in microwave applications.

Wanji Hou, Electromagnetic Compatibility Test Department of Changchun Automobile Test Center Changchun, 130103 China

Wanji Hou was born in Changchun, China, in 1989. He received the bachelor’s degree and graduated from the School of Electrical Engineering at Beijing Jiaotong University in 2013. He is currently with in Changchun Automotive Test Center Co. Ltd. His current research interests are in the field of automotive antenna testing, and electromagnetic compatibility testing.

Yuchen Ma, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology Beijing 100191, China

Yuchen Ma was born in Beijing, China, in 1993. He received the B.E. and Ph.D. degrees from the School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, in 2015 and 2021, respectively. He is currently with China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, Beijing. His current research interests include the fields of antenna design and antenna measurement.

Yuxin Ren, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology Beijing 100191, China

Yuxin Ren received the M.Sc. degree in electronic science and technology from the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China, in 2014. Since 2018, he has been an Engineer with the China Academy of Information and Communications and Technology, Beijing. His current research interests include the theory of reverberation chamber and plane wave synthesizers and other OTA test systems.

Yi Huang, Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3GJ, UK

Yi Huang (Fellow, IEEE) received B.Sc. in Physics (Wuhan, China) in 1984, M.Sc. (Eng) in Microwave Engineering (Nanjing) in 1987, and D.Phil. in Communications from the University of Oxford, UK, in 1994. He has been conducting research in the areas of antennas, wireless communications, applied electromagnetics, radar, and EMC since 1987. More recently, he is focused on mobile antennas, wireless energy harvesting, and power transfer. His experience includes three years spent with NRIET (China) as a Radar Engineer and various periods with the Universities of Birmingham, Oxford, and Essex in the UK as a member of research staff. He worked as a Research Fellow at British Telecom Labs in 1994 and then joined the Department of Electrical Engineering & Electronics, the University of Liverpool, UK, as a Faculty in 1995, where he is now a full Professor in Wireless Engineering, the Head of High-Frequency Engineering Group and Deputy Head of Department. Huang has published over 500 refereed papers in leading international journals and conference proceedings and authored four books, including Antennas: from Theory to Practice (John Wiley, 2008, 2021). He has received many patents, research grants from research councils, government agencies, charities, EU, and industry, and is a recipient of over 10 awards (e.g. BAE Systems Chairman’s Award 2017, IET, and Best Paper Awards). He has served on a number of national and international technical committees and been an Editor, Associate Editor, or Guest Editor of five international journals. In addition, he has been a keynote/invited speaker and organizer of many conferences and workshops (e.g. IEEE iWAT2010, LAPC2012, and EuCAP2018). He is at present the Editor-in-Chief of Wireless Engineering and Technology, Associate Editor of IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters, UK and Ireland Rep to European Association of Antenna and Propagation (EurAAP, 2016-2020), a Fellow of IET, and a Fellow of IEEE.

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Published

2026-02-20

How to Cite

[1]
J. . Zheng, “A Phase Center Estimation Method for Automotive Antenna Measurements”, ACES Journal, vol. 41, no. 02, pp. 118–127, Feb. 2026.

Issue

2026: Vol 41 Iss 2

Section

Advances in Next-Generation Antenna Systems and Their Testing Methodologies

Categories