Near-field far-field transformations using spherical-wave expansions

Spherical-wave expansions are a well-known technique of expressing electromagnetic field data. However, most previous work has been restricted to idealized cases in which the expansion coefficients are obtained analytically. In this paper spherical-wave expansions are used as a numerical technique for expressing arbitrary fields specified by analytical, experimental, or numerical data. Numerical results on the maximum wave order needed to expand fields arising from a source of a given size are given for two practical cases, and it is found that the generally accepted wave order cutoff value corresponds to 99.9 percent or more of the power in the input pattern. Near-field patterns computed from far-field data are compared to measured data for the two cases, demonstrating the excellent numerical accuracy of the technique.