Testing of automotive antennas are commonly performed in large Spherical Near Field (SNF) ranges able to host the entire vehicle to test the effect of the antenna coupling with the structure.
The impact of a realistic ground, such as asphalts or soil, on the radiation performance of the vehicle mounted antennas is often a desired information. As long as the free-space response of the vehicle is available, such information can be obtained with fairly good accuracy considering post-processing techniques based on the Image Theory...