An Antenna Beamwidth Estimation Method Based on Support Vector Machine

This letter proposes an antenna beamwidth (BW) estimation method for user equipment (UE) test systems using a base station (BS) emulator in the millimeter-wave (mmWave) band. The proposed method takes advantage of the fact that the BS antenna footprint can be approximated as an ellipse and detects the half-power boundary in field measurements based on support vector machine (SVM). In addition, both elevation and azimuth BWs are derived from geometric analysis of the detected ellipse boundary. This approach enables the estimation of BWs without assuming an antenna pattern model as in the conventional method. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated through ray-tracing simulations in an urban scenario. The numerical results show that the root-mean-square errors (RMSEs) of both BWs estimated by the proposed method are less than 2.0 deg for a receiver (RX) interval of 2.0 m.