Temperature changes cause thermal expansion of antenna materials and will have an important impact on antenna performances.
In some applications, it is sufficient to calculate the antenna deformation by mechanical analysis and determine the RF impact by EM analysis tools. However, if the environmental conditions of the final antenna are stringent and considered critical as in the case of military and civil applications like space and aeronautics, the thermal performance of the antenna must be determined by experiment.
Based on the preliminary results discussed in this paper present a simple and effective method for thermal testing of antennas in a spherical near field range based on multi probe technology.
