Small Anechoic Chamber Design Method for On-Line and On-Site Passive Intermodulation Measurement

A design method is proposed in this article for on-line (online measurement: measurement when producing devices) and on-site (on-site measurement: measurement when using devices) passive intermodulation (PIM) measurement with a small-size anechoic chamber. In a PIM measurement, the role of an anechoic chamber is to shield extraneous electromagnetic signal and reduce reflection, so that an accurate measurement result can be obtained. However, the chamber itself may introduce new PIM sources due to the nonlinearity in absorbing material and shielding enclosure. The traditional method to lower the influence of chamber to PIM measurement is to design a large-size PIM test chamber in order to reduce the PIM level by path loss. In this article, an innovative design concept of the PIM test chamber is presented by controlling the PIM source level of the anechoic chamber instead of increasing the size of the chamber. It can significantly reduce the chamber size using this method, particularly suitable for on-line and on-site PIM measurement. To implement the concept, absorbing material and shielding enclosure structure with extremely low PIM are developed. The design concept includes defining the worst-case reflection level, estimating the PIM level due to reflected signals, and determining the smallest size of the chamber that meets the design specifications. Finally, two PIM test chambers are built to demonstrate the design concept. PIM measurement results are given to verify the theoretical analysis.