Synthesis of wideband antenna patterns from narrowband measurements

Although many antennas are designed to operate with wide instantaneous bandwidths, it is often impractical to measure antenna patterns over wide instantaneous bandwidths. Primarily this is due to limitations in the measurement range. A feasible approach to overcoming this problem is to measure a number of single-frequency antenna patterns and synthesize the wideband antenna pattern from these components. This paper describes a simple approach to this synthesis, derives a rule of thumb for the required number of component antenna patterns as a function of several antenna parameters, and shows the results of simulated wideband antenna pattern synthesis.